Back at his old camp, Marcel found that the fish-hook necklace with which he had circled each of the peeled spruce uprights of his cache had baffled the wolverines and lynxes lured for miles by the odor of meat. Resetting short trap-lines, he waited for the "break-up" with tranquil mind, for his cache groaned with meat.
The snows were fading fast before the rain and sleet of the big thaw. Often, at night, the softening winds shifted, to drive in raw from the north, again tightening the land with frost. But each day, as May neared, the sun swung higher and higher, slowly scattering the snow to flood the ice of myriad lakes and rivers. Already, Marcel had thrilled to the trumpets of the gray vanguards of the Canadas. On fair days the sun flashed from white fleets of "wavies," bound through seas of April skies to far Arctic ports.
With May the buds of birch and poplar began to swell, later to light with the soft green of their young leaves the sombre reaches of upland jack-pine and spruce. Rimming the rivers with red, the new shoots of the willows appeared. At dawn, now, from dripping spires, white-throats and hermit thrush, fleeter than the spring, startled the drowsing forest with a reveille of song.
One afternoon in May on his return from picking up a line of traps to be cached for use the following winter, Marcel went to the neighboring pond to lift his net. For safety on the rapidly sponging ice he wore his snow-shoes and carried a twelve-foot spruce pole. He had reset the net and was lashing an anchor line to a stake when suddenly the honeycombed shell crumbled beneath his feet.
As he sank, he lunged for the pole he had dropped to set the net, but the surface settled under his leap carrying him into the water. Fighting in the mush ice for the pole almost within reach, to his horror he found his right foot trapped. He could not move farther in that direction. The snow-shoe was caught in the net.
Marcel turned back floundering to the edge of firm ice, where he held himself afloat. Fast numbing with cold, as he clung, caught like a beaver in a trap, he knew that it was but a matter of minutes. Fleur, if only Fleur were there! But Fleur was hunting in the "bush."
With a great effort he braced himself on his elbows, got his frozen fingers between his teeth, and blew the signal, once heard, his dog had never failed to answer.