"M'sieu," Marcel protested. "Eef I keel Antoine, I would tak' heem into de bush and hide heem, I would not worry ovair de fox and wolverine."
"Of course you would have hidden the body somewhere. We appreciate that. But as they are trying to put this thing on you they ignore that side of it. What you admit they found,--Antoine's body with a stab wound, and Piquet's outfit, makes it look bad to people who don't know you as we do. They won't believe that the famine got Piquet in the head. They'll say that's a tale you made up to get yourself off."
Marcel went hot with anger. His impulse was to seek the Lelacs and have it out, then and there. But he possessed the cool judgment of a long line of ancestors whose lives had often depended on their heads, so he choked back his rage.
"Now I don't want it carried down the coast that you killed your partners, Jean," went on Gillies. "Young as you are, you'll never live it down. And besides, there's no knowing what the government might do. I'll have to make a report, you know. So we've got to do some tall thinking between us before the hunters get in."
While the factor talked, the swift brain of Marcel had struck upon a plan to trap and discredit the Lelacs, but he wished to think it over, alone, before proposing it at the trade-house, so held his tongue. When he was ready he would ask the factor to hold a hearing. Then he could put some questions to his accusers that would make them squirm. One question he did ask before packing his fur and outfit from the beach up to the Mission.
"W'en dey trade dere fur weel you hold it from de oder fur, separate?"
"Why, yes, I'll do that for you, but you can't hope to identify skins, Jean."
A corner of Marcel's mouth curled in a quizzical smile. "Wait, M'sieu Gillies; I tell you later," and with a "Bon-soir!" he went out.
Although it would have been pure suicide for anyone to attempt to take Fleur from the stockade against her will, Marcel feared that some dark night those who wished his disgrace might loose their venom in an injury to his dog. So, refusing a room in the Mission House, he pitched his tent on the grass inside the spruce pickets where Fleur might lie beside him.
Here his staunch friend Jules sought Jean out. It seemed that Inspector Wallace had been up the coast at Christmas, had stayed a week, and although no one knew exactly what had transpired, whether he had as yet become a Catholic, there was no doubt in the minds of the curious that the Scotchman would shortly remove the sole obstacle to his marriage to Julie Breton.