s later when Marcel went ashore on the Isle of Graves of the
Esquimos, to boil his kettle, he found, to his delight, a Fort George
goose-boat on the same errand. The Crees who had just left the post to
shoot the winter's supply of gray and snowy geese, or "wavies," as they
are called from their resemblance in flight to a white banner waving in
the sun, had met, two nights before off the mouth of Big River, the
canoe he was following. The dog-thieves, who were strangers, did not
stop at the post, but had continued south.

With two paddles they were not holding their lead, he laughed to
himself, but were coming back. If he hurried he would overhaul them
before they reached Rupert. He did not know the Rupert River, and if
once they started inland he would be caught by the "freeze-up" in a
strange country, so he continued on late into the night.

Then followed day after day of endless toil at the paddle, for he knew
he must travel while the weather held. He could not hope to make Rupert,
or even East Main before the wind changed; which might mean idling for
days on a beach pounded by seas in which no canoe could live. At times,
with a stern breeze, he rigged a piece of canvas to a spruce pole and
sailed. But one thought dominated him as mile after mile of the gray
East Coast slid past; the thought of having his puppy once more in his
canoe, fretting at the gulls and ducks and geese, as he headed north.

Only through necessity did he stop to shoot geese, whose gray and white
legions were gathering on the coast for the annual migration. At dawn
the "gou-luk!" of the gray ganders marshalling their families out to the
feeding grounds, which once sent his blood leaping, now left him cold.
He was hunting bigger game, and his heart hungered for his puppy, beaten
and half-starved, in all likelihood, travelling somewhere ahead down
that bleak coast in the canoe of two men who did not know that close on
their heels followed an enemy as dogged, as relentless, as a wolf on
the trail of an old caribou abandoned by the herd.

And so, after days of ceaseless dip and swing, dip and swing, which at
night left his back and arms stiff and his fingers numb, Jean Marcel
turned into the mouth of the East Main River and paddled up to the post,
where he learned that the canoe of the half-breeds had not been seen,
and that no hunters of their description traded there. So he turned
again to the Bay and headed south for Rupert House. Off the Wild G