"No, eet ees a meestake!" they protested as the lean features of the Frenchman hardened in a bitter smile.
"On de last trip to my traps," went on the imperturbable Marcel, "I find four rabbit dead from de plague an' since de last snow I cross few fresh tracks."
"I fin' none een two days myself," echoed Antoine.
The stark truth of Marcel's contention drove itself home. At last, convinced, they gazed with blanched faces into each others' eyes from which looked fear--fear of the dread weeks of the March moon and the slow death which starvation might bring. The grim spectre which ever hovers over the winter camps in the white silences now menaced the shack on the Ghost.
Shortly, fresh rabbit tracks became rare. After years of plenty, the days of lean hunting for lynx and fox had returned. The plague, which periodically sweeps the north, would bring starvation, as well, to many a tepee of the improvident children of the snows.
As the weeks went by, the food cache at the camp on the Ghost steadily shrank. The nets under the ice and the set-lines were now bringing no fish. More and more Jean slept in his half-way camp ten miles north, for although the short rations he fed Fleur had been obtained solely by his own efforts, Joe and Antoine objected to the well-nourished look of the puppy while they grew thin and slowly weakened. But, for generations, the huskies have been accustomed to starvation, and if not slaving with the sleds, will for weeks show but slight effect from short rations. Besides, Fleur had, from necessity and instinct, become a hunter, and many a ptarmigan and stray rabbit she picked up foraging for herself.
To increase the difficulty of hunting for food, January had brought blizzard after blizzard, piling deep with drifts the trails to their trap-lines, which they still visited regularly, for the starved lynxes were coming to the bait of the flesh of their kin in greater and greater numbers. Twice, seeking the return of the caribou, the desperate men travelled far into the barrens beaten by the withering January winds, returning with wind-burned, frost-blackened faces, for no man may face for long the needle-pointed scourge of the midwinter northers off the Straits.