Borrowing Joe's canoe, he packed it through the "bush" to a good fish lake where he set the net under the young ice, and baited lines; then taking Fleur, he started cruising out locations for his trap-lines in new country, far toward the blue hills of the Salmon watershed, where game signs had been thick the previous spring.
Toward the last of October when the snow began to make deep, Fleur's education as a sled-dog began. Already the fast growing puppy was creeping up toward one hundred pounds in weight, and soon, under the kind but firm tutelage of the master, was as keen to be harnessed for a run as a veteran husky of the winter trails.
When he had set and baited his traps over a wide circle of new country to the north, Jean returned to his net and lines, and at the end of ten days had a supply of trout and whitefish for Fleur, which he cached at the lake. On his return, Antoine and Joe derided his labors when the caribou trails networked the muskegs, but Marcel ignored them.
It looked like a good winter for game. Snow-shoe rabbits were plentiful and wherever their runways led in and out of the scrub-spruce and fir covers, there those furred assassins of the forest, the fox and the lynx, the fisher and the marten, were sure to make their hunting-grounds. During November and December, when pelts are at their best, the men made a harvest at their traps. The caribou were still on the barrens feeding on the white moss from which they scraped the snow with their large, round-toed hoofs, and the rabbit snares furnished stew whenever the trappers craved a change from caribou steaks. But no Indian will eat rabbit as a regular diet while he can get red meat. This varying hare of the north, which, so often, in the spring, from Labrador to the Yukon, stands between the red trapper and starvation, has a flavor which quickly palls on the taste, and never quite seems to satisfy hunger. The Crees often speak of "starving on rabbits."
During these weeks following the trap-lines, learning the ways of the winter forest after a puppyhood on the coast, as Fleur grew in bulk and strength, so her affection deepened for Jean Marcel. Now nearly a year old, she easily drew the sled loaded with the meat of a caribou into camp, on a beaten trail. At night in the tent Marcel had pitched and banked with snow, as a half-way camp on the round of his trap-lines, she would sit with hairy ears pointed, watching his every movement, looking unutterable adoration as he scraped his pelts, stretching them on frames to dry or mended his clothes and moccasins. Then, before he turned in to his plaited, rabbit-skin blankets, warmer by far than any fur robes known in the north, Fleur invariably demanded her evening romp. Taking a hand in her jaws which never closed, she would lift her lips, baring her white fangs in a snarl of mimic anger, as she swung her head from side to side, until, seizing her, Jean rolled her on her back, while rumbles and growls from her shaggy throat voiced her delight.