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Title: Farther North

Date of first publication: 1944

Author: Kathrene Pinkerton (1887-1967)

Illustrator: Harvé Stein (1904-1996)

Date first posted: November 6, 2025

Date last updated: November 6, 2025

Faded Page eBook #20251105

This eBook was produced by: Mardi Desjardins, John Routh & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

by the same author

WILDERNESS WIFE

THREE’S A CREW

ADVENTURE NORTH

TWO ENDS TO OUR SHOESTRING

FOX ISLAND

KATHRENE PINKERTON

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Two lines of thought slipped through Ann Jackman’s mind as she paddled toward the spruce-clad point. One concerned the present, the beauty of the day and the joy of paddling. These were gay thoughts, untroubled. And to Ann it was only normal that she, a girl of sixteen, was alone in a birchbark canoe on a lake in the Canadian wilderness. This was her home, her life. She thought only how lovely Far Lake was as it sparkled under a midsummer sun. Cat’s-paws stirred the water and tiny wavelets danced, diamond crested.

Even the canoe seemed to respond to the joyousness of the day. It was her own, an eleven-foot birchbark she had purchased from Pe-tah-bo with the proceeds of her first fur farm mink. She loved the tiny canoe, though Philip, her brother, scorned it.

Philip wasn’t quite fourteen, but he acted and talked as if he were twenty. He always used the big Peterborough.

The present thoughts were so happy they crowded the deep thoughts even deeper. These belonged to the future, which as yet held only vague misgivings. But even misgivings were new to Ann, and they troubled her. Only recently had she been conscious of their presence.

For a long time she had looked forward to the winter, when she would go away to school. Now as the summer rushed past, with July already upon her and September just ahead, she’d begun to have doubts. Life outside in school would be so different.

Ann reached the point. She knelt in the center of her craft and a little on one side, so that the canoe seemed on the verge of tipping over. In that position she could get a long straight pull on the paddle, and she knew no canoe tips over once the paddler has learned to become part of it. After three years in the wilderness, Ann and canoe were one.

As she rounded the point her paddle stopped in mid-stroke. She’d heard the clop of an ax, and axes don’t wander through the bush alone. All the Indians were at the Hudson’s Bay Post. White people—there were none on Far Lake.

But here was a canoe, and a white boy was in it. His hair was as blond as her own. He couldn’t be more than a year older. He was handsome, and startling too as he stood in the stern and paddled with long graceful swoops. She had never seen even an Indian do that.

Ann was close to shore, and the birch canoe blended with the rocks, her dark green shirt with the foliage above. The boy came toward her swiftly. His face was alight with the joy of paddling. His smile was confident, almost too confident.

“But you’re not a bear. You’re— Say, what are you? Or who are you? And how’d you get here?”

Ann had lived in the bush long enough to know it could hold surprises, but this boy and the sound of the ax presented as bewildering a mystery as she had ever encountered. She determined not to be outdone in assurance.

“Girls like you don’t grow in the north woods! Honest, now! How’d you get here?”

Ann felt like a specimen. The boy saw her confusion and the friendliness in his brown eyes reassured her.

“They’d never believe me unless I showed you to them,” he said. “I want credit for my discoveries.”

A man and a boy came out of the forest. Ann knew instantly they were father and son. They walked alike, with a quick, sure stride.

“I’m Ken Haldorn,” the boy said as the pair approached. “What’s your name?”

“Ann Jackman,” she said. The others had reached the beach. They were as astonished as Ken had been.

“Miss Ann Jackman,” Ken said. “This is Mr. Sloane of Chicago and his son Jerry.” He turned to the others. “She says she lives here but we don’t have to believe it.”

Ann laughed. Her confidence mounted. These strangers were more astounded than she. Mr. Sloane recovered first.

“I don’t want to seem to doubt so charming a young woman,” he said, “but I can’t believe it. This is supposed to be an empty country.”

“And we are,” Mr. Sloane admitted. “We’d better explain our presence. We’re making a canoe trip and we arrived on the morning train at Far Lake station.”

She should have guessed the explanation. Canoeing parties from cities cruised lakes and rivers far to the south. The railroad had touched that country for years but had only recently reached Far Lake.

“Then I assume we’re Far Lake’s first tourists,” Mr. Sloane said. “We’d hoped so.”

“You’ll have to show us where Fox Island is,” Mr. Sloane said. “Our maps are at the camp.”

Mr. Sloane and Jerry went through the woods. Ken and Ann paddled along the shore. He led the way. She noticed the easy swing of his broad shoulders. He didn’t use the quick, short native Indian thrust she and Philip had learned, but he paddled well.

Ann was eager to see the camp. From pictures of outdoor equipment in sportsmen’s catalogues, she knew what to expect. She had envied city vacationists their luxury and was prepared to find a tent fly for shade, outdoor furniture, perhaps gay striped chairs, and certainly an air of ease.

Ken’s canoe turned toward shore. Ann saw a camp pitched beneath the trees and gasped. It was as plain as the wilderness variety. The small tent was taut and smooth. The mosquito-netting door was tucked in snugly. There was no fly for shade, no table, no canvas chairs. The cooking crane and blackened cooking pails were as simple as the Jackmans’ own.

“It looks rough, but Mr. Sloane is proud of being hardy,” he said. “Won’t use a guide, though he could afford half a dozen. He’s a camping nut, but you’ll like him. Jerry is a good egg too. Met him at school last year and they asked me to come along.”

As Ann walked to the camp she hoped Ken didn’t realize how unsure she felt. She hated shyness in herself, and Ken’s assurance had made her even more aware of the handicap of three years’ isolation.

The Sloanes came into camp a moment later. Ann had liked them from the first moment. Father and son had the same slow smile. Compared to Ken’s dash they seemed quiet, but somehow they made her feel comfortable and accepted.

Mr. Sloane suggested tea. Ken and Jerry put water on to boil and opened a tin of biscuits. They refused to let her help.

They laughed as he set the tea table on the ground beside her. He arranged canned milk, a bag of brown sugar, and nested cups with a great flourish.

Mr. Sloane asked about the fur farm, and as Ann told of their mink and foxes, of the big log house on the island, their winter journeys by dog team, and of the three years they’d lived in the north, she realized she’d made an impression. Never before had she seen herself as a heroine.

“Dad says that’s past, now that the railroad’s reached Far Lake,” Ann said. “Even the Hudson’s Bay Post is different since it’s moved down to steel. Now we can get almost anything we need. When the Post was on Lake Caribou we had to paddle a long day to reach it, and then we could only buy the few things carried for the Indian trade.”

“When we paddled away from the railroad this morning we thought we were modern Daniel Boones!” Jerry laughed.

“We are,” Ken said. “Ann proved it. When she first saw me she looked dumbfounded.”

“I was,” Ann said. She didn’t mind admitting it now. “You’re the first people from outside I’ve seen.”

She was surprised that the strangers hadn’t heard about Fox Island. Mr. Gillespie, manager of the Hudson’s Bay Post, must have told them.

“He was away,” Mr. Sloane said. “I left a note with his half-breed clerk. An old Hudson’s Bay man likes to know who’s traveling in his district.”

Ann liked Mr. Sloane even better for that. And he was careful to lead the conversation so she learned a great deal about the trio without having to ask questions. Ken and Jerry had one more year of preparatory school before college.

“That’s exactly what I’m hoping!” Ann cried, delighted to think they shared the same problem.

Mr. Sloane asked where she’d gone to school in the wilderness and Ann explained that she and Philip studied with her mother, who’d been a teacher.

“But she wants me to have my last year before college at a regular school,” Ann said. “So I’m going away this fall.”

“She doesn’t have to worry, does she, Jerry?” Ken said. “When the other girls see those blue eyes and that smile, they’ll wish they’d been brought up in the wilderness.”

“Ken’s at the age when he considers a girl’s looks of most importance,” Mr. Sloane said. “But I don’t believe you have cause for dread on any count.”

This was very heady after three years when she’d had only Mr. Gillespie to pay her compliments in his old world manner. Ann was enjoying herself so thoroughly she hated to go. But it was getting late. She stood up.

“We hope you really mean that invitation to Fox Island,” Mr. Sloane said. “We’d like to meet your family.”

“Of course!” Ann said. “Camp on Fox Island.” And then a dazzling inspiration seized her. “And have supper with us tomorrow night.”

“We’re a big gang to wish on your mother,” Mr. Sloane said. “Perhaps we’d better—”

“You don’t know my mother,” Ann said. “She loves to have company.” She saw a tiny smile at the corner of Mr. Sloane’s mouth. “Of course,” she admitted, “we haven’t had much company in the north. But I know she’d be delighted.”

Ann wondered if she’d been too eager in her desire to see them again, but they were pleased by her insistence.

“You are very convincing,” Mr. Sloane said. “Or perhaps we’re easy to convince because we want to come.”

They walked with her to the beach. Ken put her canoe in the water and held out his hand to help her.

“You’re out of your class, Ken, when you try to steady birchbarks,” Mr. Sloane said. “We don’t want Ann to get a ducking.”

At the point she turned and waved. The three waved back. Ken’s arms made a semaphore. His voice came over the water, “We’ll be seeing you tomorrow.”

Ann reached Fox Island to find Hugh Mathews at the landing. His canoe was in the water. The old trapper looked relieved when he saw her.

“Just starting out to hunt you,” he said. “Dave and your mother’d begun to worry.”

Hugh was the fifth member of the Jackman household. He never admitted this. He had arrived one winter day and agreed to remain for two days’ work on a depleted woodpile. The two days had stretched into two years, as one task had led to another. The old trapper still insisted that soon he must be “going along,” and that he “did not hold with fur farms.” At first the Jackmans had believed him and dreaded his departure, but now as they’d come to understand and love him, they gloried in his brave pretense.

Ann stopped, remembering Hugh did not hold with railroads either, or city vacationists. They, he said, had ruined the country to the south. “City sports,” he called them, and he dreaded the time when the new railroad would bring them to Far Lake. Ann couldn’t tell him his fears had come true. Neither did she want her own excitement dampened by his gloomy predictions about tomorrow’s guests.

The meal was on the table when Ann and Hugh reached the house. Philip met them at the door.

She started to tell him, but Philip demanded where she’d met them and how old they were.

“Seventeen.” And then, although she didn’t want to tell her story piecemeal, she said, “At first I thought they were even older.”

“Let Ann tell her news, Philip,” his father said. “She’s bursting with it.”

Ann began at the beginning. She was surprised at how much she had discovered about the strangers in one visit. John Sloane was a lawyer. Jerry had gone to preparatory school since his mother’s death two years before. He’d known Ken for a year. The Sloanes liked Ken. Jerry even looked up to Ken a bit, for Ken seemed older. He’d lost both parents when he was young, had always gone to boarding schools. He’d traveled, had spent a year in Europe with his aunt and had gone to school in Switzerland. That was where he learned to ski.

“You seem to like these folks,” Hugh said, a twinkle in eyes set deep in wind and laughter wrinkles.

“You will too, Hugh,” Ann said. “They’re not a bit like what I thought city sportsmen would be from the way you described them.”

“But their camp’s as plain as camps you and Dad make. They came because this is an empty country and you should have seen their faces when—”

“I can imagine,” Mrs. Jackman said. “Trust Ann to find any excitement that happens on Far Lake.”

“Drawn to it like a magnet,” Mr. Jackman said. “But what’s so exciting about our first crop of outside canoeists? They were sure to come sooner or later.”

Ann smiled at her father. For years he had foretold the opening of the country. White trappers would replace the Indians and fur farms would replace traps. Mr. Gillespie of the Hudson’s Bay Company had laughed at Dave Jackman’s prophecy that some day people would fly in with airplanes. It had seemed fantastic even to Ann, but now she wondered if that might not come true. She was beginning to believe that anything might happen on Far Lake.

“Why shouldn’t Ann be excited?” her mother demanded. “She’s been away from people for three years.”

While Ann and her mother washed the dishes, they talked of nothing but the coming visit. When they joined the others in the living room, Ann was surprised to find her father and Philip reading as though nothing extraordinary had happened. Even Hugh was, as usual, thumbing through a mail order catalogue. Only at Christmas did he actually send off an order, but he spent the year in mental buying.

Ann was too restless to read. She rearranged the long low bookcases beneath the windows, regrouped the pewter plates on the walnut chest, and tried to see the room through the eyes of the coming guests. She hoped the evening would demand a fire. In firelight the log walls took on a warm rosy sheen and the whole room came alive. Even tonight, with easy chairs drawn up beneath the lamp, magazines and books on the table, and Mrs. Jackman’s sewing basket beside her chair, the graciousness of the room was inescapable.

Mrs. Jackman put down her mending, picked up a magazine, and turned to the fashion section. For weeks Ann’s school clothes had been her main interest. Years of trail clothing, and years of never seeing another woman except an Ojibwa Indian clad in shapeless calico, had brought distrustful moments to home dressmaking. One had come now, Ann knew, from the dismay in her mother’s voice.

“Look, Ann! Here’s the way we should have made those sleeves in that red dress.”

Ann looked at the magazine. Her heart sank as she realized how dreadfully wrong were the sleeves they had just completed. She’d been so sure of that red dress, even planned to wear it the next evening. At least she’d been saved from that mistake.

“Is there enough material to make new sleeves?” her mother asked. “But I doubt if I could cut them without a pattern.”

“You mean that red dress you girls just made?” he asked. “Never saw Ann look prettier in anything.”

“Sleeves!” her husband said. “What about the girl who wears them? Honestly, Mary, I don’t know what’s happened to you. All this summer you’ve been bothering over trifles.”

Dave Jackman stared at his wife. He closed his book, filled his pipe, and puffed for a few moments. Ann knew the signs. Her father was getting his thoughts in order.

“Mary,” he said at last, “for weeks I’ve been listening to you and Ann talk about clothes, what was right and what wasn’t. If I didn’t know better, I’d imagine Ann hadn’t been wearing clothes the last three years. I haven’t said anything. Perhaps you girls get tired of hearing me talk about fur and how to raise mink and foxes. But I’d like to know why a sleeve isn’t a trifle.”

Ann looked at her mother, suspecting she was not alone in having misgivings. But fear was something her mother never had admitted.

“Mother is afraid I’ll seem queer and awkward when I go out to school,” Ann said. She breathed more freely now. Even the dread seemed less, once it had been put in words. “You know, Dad, little things make such a difference to a girl.”

“That’s really at the bottom of all this panic,” Dave Jackman said. “You’re both worried because the girls at school have been brought up differently. They’ve gone to parties and learned to dance and had a lot of clothes while Ann’s been up here driving dogs and wearing breeches and helping run a fur farm.”

“Ann knows the girls will be different,” her mother said. “She can’t expect that after all the years up—”

“But you said tonight Ann’s been away from people for three years.” Dave Jackman stopped a moment, and then he went on with a new earnestness. “I say she hasn’t. Philip is a person, and so is Hugh. You and I and Gillespie are persons. So are the Indians and their families. They like Ann and she gets along with them because she’s learned to be a human being. Up here she’s met new people and learned new ways. She can meet them down below, and learn ’em. At first she might strike tough going, but she knows enough to keep her mouth shut and her eyes open until she’s sure where she stands.”

It was a long speech for Dave Jackman. He was embarrassed as he put his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“I know what’s bothering you, Mary,” he said. “When we first talked about a fur farm you were afraid we didn’t have the right to take these young ’uns from their school and friends and bury ourselves in a wilderness. But neither of us is sorry we took that chance. I don’t believe Ann will be, or Philip, when it comes his turn to go. Nothing they’ve done in the north will hold them back. I bet those people Ann met this afternoon didn’t find her so very different. They might have envied her a bit.”

“All I’m trying to say,” her father explained, “is that what really counts is whether a fellow is sound inside. That make any sense?”

“More sense than my worries this summer,” Mrs. Jackman said, and her warm laugh broke a little. “Oh, Dave! Whatever would Ann and I do without our men folks to set us straight?”

Mrs. Jackman closed her magazine. There was a sudden vigor in her movements as she straightened the big table. Then she smiled at her husband. “But, of course, Dave, you understand Ann and I must change the sleeves in that red dress.”

Next morning everyone had a party spirit as they prepared for guests. Hugh caught a large lake trout. Mr. Jackman brought a big roast of caribou from the icehouse. Mrs. Jackman said he must be expecting an army, but he doubted if it would be a meal for young appetites.

Philip cut lettuce for salad and picked the first garden peas of the summer. Mrs. Jackman made a chocolate cake and filled the doughnut jar. Ann dusted the living room until it shone and polished the pewter plates on the big walnut chest. She looked at the flower-filled room with satisfaction. It was a home to be proud of.

The guests arrived in mid-afternoon. Hugh and Mr. Jackman helped carry the packs to the flat beside the house where the tent was to be set. Jerry and Philip brought balsam boughs and Ken made the balsam beds. He worked expertly, laid each one bow-side up and covered the heavy butts with soft ends. When he finished the job with a neat tufting of short full-needled tips, Mr. Jackman was impressed.

“In Quebec, sir,” Ken said. “On canoe trips with my uncle. His guide showed me how.”

Europe, Switzerland, and now Quebec with a guide, Ann thought. Even the Canadian wilderness would be no novelty for Ken.

Mr. Jackman asked if they’d come for fishing, but when he learned that Far Lake was only a jumping-off place for a month’s swing through waterways to the north, he was surprised.

“I haven’t been in the bush for years, so my paddle stroke is rusty,” Mr. Sloane said. “Jerry is a beginner, and only fair compared to Ken. But there’s nothing wrong with Ken’s paddle arm. We call him our expert.”

Ann felt sorry for Ken, a stranger, singled out so conspicuously. She’d have been so embarrassed she’d have tried to stammer confused protests. But Ken smiled as though his ability was of no great importance. He was confident, but no boaster. Even Hugh showed approval.

Mr. Sloane brought out his maps and spread them on the ground. He knelt, tracing the route with a forefinger. The creases of the paper were worn. Evidently the maps had been unfolded many times. Names of rivers and lakes came readily to Mr. Sloane’s lips and Jerry knew the route without glancing at the map.

“When I begin to talk about this trip, I don’t know when to stop,” he said. “Jerry and I have planned on it for years.”

Hugh’s face was blank, and for a moment Ann’s father puffed at his pipe in silence.

“That’s tricky country,” Mr. Jackman said. “Boiling Sand River is no stream for a rusty paddle. Those lakes, Dogtooth, Seiganagau, Wabigoon, have long stretches. They get nasty in a bit of wind.”

“I know,” and Mr. Jackman smiled at Ken. He turned to Mr. Sloane. “On the map this route looks easy. But you couldn’t rightly call this a map. It’s made from a rough survey by a party which paddled through the country just as you intend to do. They had to guess at a lot, and leave a lot out. Have you ever tried to find the take-off for a portage when the bush looks like a solid green wall? You can spend half a day in hunting. Even when you find it, you won’t always know you’ve found it. Those portages are grown over. Haven’t been used for years. No one’s there in summer. The Indians are all down at the railroad. It’s an awful empty country to get lost in.”

“Man! Why didn’t you say so? Hugh and I’ve been worrying ever since you told us your route. You could have saved yourself a lot of advice.”

“Dave’s been tryin’ to find words to tell you what the bush looks like from a canoe,” Hugh said.

Their laughter melted all formality. No one remembered that an hour before they’d been strangers. When camp was made, they were old friends. The lawyer said “Hugh” or “Dave” so naturally, Hugh was soon saying “John.”

Mr. Sloane was anxious to see the fur farm and they walked to the big fenced enclosure at the end of the island. None of the visitors had seen live mink in pens. Ann and Philip led them to their own mink last of all. Rose and Violet lived in secluded quarters as befitted the first two mothers to present the farm with baby mink.

“Ann and I sold fourteen pelts last winter.” Philip tried to conceal his pride.

“And tamed the mothers. Rose will come when I call. I’ll get her supper and show you.”

Philip loved to show off Rose and had a willing audience in Jerry. He admired her shining coat and bright-eyed interest. Ann’s more timid Violet was completely forgotten, and, soon, so was Ann.

Jerry and Philip knelt before Rose’s pen. The boys were much alike. They had the same quality of instant friendliness strengthened by reserve. Ann knew Philip liked Jerry, and her brother didn’t always decide his likings as instantly as she.

The silver foxes captured Mr. Sloane’s interest. He knew the dramatic history of the fox farm industry, which had in a few years proved that the rare silver fox could be domesticated. He admired the seven grown foxes and pressed his face into the netting as Hugh gave four bright-eyed cubs their evening meal.

The old trapper always forgot that he didn’t hold with fur farms when the foxes were admired. “Dave says the Prince Edward Island stock is as good.” And then he added, “But I’d have to see ’em.”

“You people have built up an important business!” he said. “And in three years.”

“Starting from scratch,” Dave Jackman said. “We were lucky to dig out a fox den with a pair and five cubs for a starter.”

“Luck is only a word for hard work and using one’s head,” the lawyer said.

“We’ll have to give Ann credit for some of the head work,” Mrs. Jackman said. “She discovered the parent fox on his way home to the den.”

“Good for her!” The lawyer was impressed. “No wonder you call this farm the Big Four Company.” He turned to Ann. “It’s very rare to find a girl of sixteen who’s already earned her stock in a going concern like this.”

Ann flushed. She knew she didn’t receive Mr. Sloane’s outspoken praise in as nonchalant a fashion as had Ken. He would have smiled as though it weren’t important. She tried to, but she stopped. It was important. Ann remembered the night when her father had told her and Philip that all four were doing a job together. His speech had made a real adventure of three years in the north.

As they left the fenced enclosure of the fur farm, Mrs. Jackman said that supper would be ready soon.

“Give us fifteen minutes to wash up,” John Sloane said as the three turned toward their tent.

Hugh walked to the house with the Jackmans. Ann waited to hear their verdict. She felt a bit triumphant about her guests.

“I don’t know when I’ve met a chap I took to as I did to John Sloane,” Dave Jackman said. “He never mentioned the Albany until we forced it from him. Quiet, but a man to count on in a pinch.”

“They even walk alike,” Ann added. “Aren’t you glad they came? Hugh, didn’t I tell you they aren’t a bit like what you call city sports?”

“I liked ’em fine,” Hugh said. “They’re a different breed o’ cats. That boy Ken is a husky lad. Only, first off, I thought he was older.”

“Perhaps growing up without parents has made him seem so,” Mrs. Jackman said. “He’s charming. Both boys are. Dave, I’m going to invite them to stay a day or two. They ought to get their paddle muscles fit.”

“Had the same idea, Mary,” her husband said. “I’d like to see more of John Sloane.”

Ann rushed upstairs to dress for supper. She changed three times before she finally decided on a blouse and skirt. They would be safe, and the blue blouse matched her eyes. She finished dressing as the guests came up the path. She ran downstairs and met them at the front door. Mr. Sloane stopped.

He looked at the large two-storied room with the deep fireplace at the end, flanked by a broad staircase leading to the gallery above. The gallery ran the full length of the house, with bedrooms opening off. Ann had remembered to open the three doors so the sunlight might filter through and shine upon the beams above. Ann watched Mr. Sloane’s face. This was the first time an outsider had seen their home.

“Ann, if her drawings could be called plans,” Mrs. Jackman said. “She drew them mainly to convince us that we should have second story bedrooms off a gallery.”

“And it has charm! Ann must have a feel for houses.” He turned to her. “I’ve some magazines you’d enjoy. I’ll send them to you.”

It was late when they left the supper table. Mrs. Jackman began to carry dishes to the kitchen.

“Our gang isn’t going to let you wait on us,” Ken said as he took a plate from her hands and led her toward an easy chair before the fire. “I’ll guarantee not to break a dish. Ann can oversee the job.”

When Ann and Ken reached the kitchen, Philip was working at a full dishpan and Jerry stood armed with a towel.

Afterwards they drew up in a semicircle before the crackling logs. Ann smiled at her mother. The first houseparty on Fox Island was proving a success.

“How’d you fellows happen to choose the country to the north?” Dave Jackman asked. “It’s off the beaten track.”

“That’s why we chose it,” the lawyer said. “Jerry and I wanted to get off the tourists’ routes. There’s a thrill in amateur exploring. Wanted to do it three years ago, but I could never get away for a month. Now we’re glad we waited until Ken could come.”

“You and Dave are lucky. Your work supplies a logical purpose for every trip you take. But city chaps like Ken and Jerry and me—we have to make a game of it. We hunt for obstacles, and then try to beat them.”

“Never thought of it that way,” Hugh said. “But you done a good job hunting obstacles when you picked that country.”

“Bart always said so. Claimed he’d struck a vein. Only he didn’t live to prove it. Fact is, he left the mine to me.”

Hugh pointed it out on a map and the Jackmans told the story. They’d been excited six months before when Hugh first heard about the will, but the old trapper had refused to take his inheritance seriously. Hugh did not “hold with” gold mines any more than with fur farms.

“You shouldn’t ignore a mine,” the lawyer said. “That country may be the gold district of the future.”

“Maybe I should have gone up there,” Hugh admitted. “Now Gillespie says two men have jumped my claim.”

“Jumped it!” Mr. Sloane exclaimed. “That’s robbery! But how did Gillespie know?”

“Word travels in the bush. One fellow tells another. Anyway, what do I need of a mine? At that, it might come in handy for the kids—if the mine was any good.”

“Why don’t Ann and Philip come with us?” Jerry asked. “They could look after Hugh’s gold mine.”

Ann’s eyes lighted. She had never taken a real wilderness journey. She thought of long days in a canoe, evening campfires, the excitement of seeing new country.

“Sorry, Jerry,” Mr. Jackman said. “We can’t spare Ann and Philip this summer.”

His tone reminded Ann of how precious were the weeks slipping by so fast. It would be the last time for a year when the Jackmans would be together.

“Someone should hunt up this mine,” John Sloane said. “Hugh can’t let himself be robbed.”

“I don’t want to be,” Hugh said. “I’d sort of planned on taking a month off. But you know how it is with a fur farm—always something needs doing. By the time you’ve raised the young fur, there’s winter feed to get, and then comes peltin’ and after that breedin’ time is round again. Right now, I don’t see my way clear to take so long a trip.”

Ann stared at Hugh in astonishment. Never had she heard him complain of work. He’d only grumbled if work slackened.

“Just what I’ve been thinking for the last half hour,” Hugh said. “No sense in three husky lads like you not having a purpose for your trip.”

“It’s a fine idea for several reasons,” the lawyer said. “Gives us an excuse for stopping on our way back.”

“Plan to get here for Treaty Day,” Dave Jackman said. “It’ll be in the middle of August, just about the time you’d be going through.”

“And it’s well worth seeing,” Mrs. Jackman assured them. “Four hundred Indians gather at the Post to collect treaty money. The Indian agent and the doctor will come and Mr. Gillespie gives a real party.”

Ann wore the look of a conscientious and worried hostess when she stopped Philip after breakfast. She’d recalled all the stories of gay houseparties she’d read and had found no inspiration. In books, hostesses could depend on sailboats, motor cars, tennis courts, and dancing parties. Fox Island must carry on without any of these things.

“We could go for a long paddle down the lake. It’d be fun to explore a river.”

“But Ken and Jerry are going to spend a whole month in a canoe! We’ve got to do something different!”

“So does Ken. But we can’t just sit and look at mink and foxes.” It was evident that Philip wouldn’t be very helpful. “We’ve got to think up ways to entertain them.”

Ann didn’t answer. She wondered if Philip didn’t like Ken. Philip never arrived at opinions on swift impulses as she did, and he never stated his opinion until he was sure. Philip never could be prodded.

It was Ken, after all, who was responsible for a busy morning. They were lounging in the sunshine when Ann suggested swimming. Ken was amazed to discover neither Ann nor Philip had ever dived off a springboard.

“But that’s the fun of swimming,” he said. “We could make a diving board in no time with a fifteen-foot plank.”

“Lad, if we had planks like that around here we’d have used them in the house,” Hugh said. “Only way to get a plank in this country is to cut down your timber and whipsaw—”

“I’d forgotten you use logs up here,” said Ken, joining in the laughter at his mistake. “Let’s forget about the plank.”

“Perhaps we could get the same effect with two springy saplings,” Jerry suggested. “Could we find a piece of lumber big enough to make a jump-off board?”

“You get the trees and I’ll find a board,” he said. “And I’ll sharpen my broadax so I can hew those logs smooth enough for you to run on.”

Ann knew they would be smooth. She had seen Hugh with a broadax hewing the log walls.

Philip felled the trees. Ann was proud of the way he cut the kerf, estimated the direction of the wind, and then gave one skillful clip to the uncut fibers.

“That boy can certainly use an ax!” Ken said. “Laid those trees just where he said he would. How’d he learn to do that?”

“He and Hugh cut the big Norways for our house,” Ann said. “Philip is as good as any man.”

It was almost noon before the two logs had been carried to the lake shore, hewed, fastened together, anchored at the shore end, and the jump-off board spiked on. The length of the logs had required careful estimation and many changes. Ken had taken charge of the adjustment.

“Get them too long and we’d have so much spring we’d go up in the air and never come down,” he said. “And Ann has never dived before.”

It was nice of Ken to remember that. She’d been dreading her first plunge. And it was the first time that being a girl had won her special privileges. Always she and Philip had shared risks alike.

“If a fellow needs something in the bush bad enough, he can generally figure a way to get it,” he said.

Ken made an experimental dive and pronounced the board perfect. Ann admired the clean way his body cut the water. Ken did everything well.

Ann’s heart sank. She’d never heard the word “form” in the north. She and Philip had learned to paddle, snowshoe, and drive dogs to cover miles. Even fishing and shooting had been judged by results.

“Just a way of saying a fellow does it right,” Dave Jackman said. “Any good woodsman has form too.”

“Sure he does, Dave,” the lawyer admitted. “The effortless way a good man gets through the bush is a beautiful thing to see.”

Ann expected to spend the afternoon on the new diving board, but that noon John Sloane said work on a fur farm shouldn’t stop for guests.

“We’ve got to smoke whitefish before they go into deep water. And I need a dozen sacks of caribou moss to chink the new mink quarters.”

She loved the great spruce swamp which lay behind the ridge on the mainland. In their three years in the north she and Philip had spent many days in that swamp. It was dark and cool and mysterious and she couldn’t think of a lovelier place to spend the afternoon.

Two canoes were loaded with sacks, axes, and an afternoon lunch, cold tea, and, at the last moment, Philip appeared with Ogema, their lead dog. Ogema wore his summer harness fitted with a contrivance to drag two poles.

“No sense in packing heavy sacks of moss back to the lake shore when Ogema likes to work,” he said.

“It’d be as easy to carry them ourselves as to drive him,” Ken said. “We could do it in half the time.”

“You don’t know sledge dogs.” Philip’s tone was curt. “After the first trip he’ll make the others without orders.”

Philip was inclined to be touchy about Ogema, and rightly so. Ogema had proved himself on many winter trails. Ann was as confident of the leader’s ability as Philip, but she changed the subject quickly. She wanted that afternoon to be peaceful and friendly.

It was. Ken’s and Jerry’s admiration of the great spruce swamp placated Philip. Ann’s own pride in their country was completely justified.

They stood beneath the dense rank of spruce. Overhead the branches met in a mat of green. An occasional shaft of sunlight filtered through in a long pencil of milky light. Underfoot the green carpet of moss was so deep and springy their shoepacks scarcely left an imprint. Every tree was festooned in long streamers of gray-green moss.

“We can get more chinking than Hugh can use in a year,” Ken said as he began to tear dry moss from branches.

He threw it down from the trees so fast Ann couldn’t keep up with him in filling sacks. When he had cleaned off the lower branches, he stood on the full sacks to reach higher.

“Philip and I never thought of that,” Ann said. “We used to climb the trees.”

Ogema started with his loaded poles. Philip led the way and Jerry followed. Soon they were back. Ogema led, and when he reached the pile of sacks he turned around and stood beside them waiting for another load.

“If that dog could lift sacks, he wouldn’t need Philip,” Ken said. “In the pictures I’d seen of sledge dogs, the men always carried whips.”

“We do in winter,” Ann said. “But we’ve never struck a dog. We crack the whips because we like the sound.”

Soon a dozen sacks were piled by the lake. There was still plenty of time for a walk. They hung Ogema’s harness in a tree so he would be unhampered and he bounded ahead on the trail, stopping occasionally to look back with gleaming eyes. He knew work had won him a special privilege of a summer walk.

They followed moose trails which turned and twisted, crossed and recrossed. Moose never seemed to make up their minds in what direction they wished to go. Generations of moose had followed those well-marked paths. The ruts were worn deep, sometimes waist-deep. Philip said if they’d stop talking they might see a moose. Several times they heard a crash of brush made by one running ahead.

They had penetrated deeply into the swamp when they stopped at an intersection of moose trails. The ruts ran out in all directions.

“It would be easy to get lost in here,” said Jerry. “Every foot of this swamp looks like another.”

“It goes on for miles,” Ann said. “Men have wandered for days and died of hunger.”

They sat on a great green hummock of dry moss and ate sandwiches and cake and drank cold tea before they started home.

“Good boy!” he said. “We’ll wish we had you with us on some of those portages this summer.”

As they climbed the crest of the ridge Ann looked back at the swamp, a vast stretch of green, level and smooth and unbroken as far as her eyes could see. It lay brooding and remote. Jerry stood beside her.

“No wonder Dad has talked about the north,” he said. “I didn’t know there could be such a country.”

The next morning Ann faced the day without anxiety. There was no need to plan. Everything they did was fun. Laughter and friendly jokes filled every hour. They spent the afternoon at the new diving board. Ken was an excellent instructor, Philip a ready pupil, but Ann began to wonder if she’d ever have that vague thing called “form.”

It was late when they left the lake. Ken and Jerry turned toward their tent and Ann and Philip dripped across the veranda.

Ann ran upstairs to dress. A quick glance at the clock assured her she had time to try a new hair style she had seen in a magazine. She’d practiced it in secret, but tonight seemed the occasion to wear it first in public.

She surveyed the new arrangement in the mirror, and liked the smooth contour of her head with the hair combed back severely. She liked most of all the low roll in the back. She hoped Ken would like it. Ken noticed little things, and spoke of them. Jerry might notice them, but he was almost as inarticulate as Philip.

Ann had an empty feeling when she thought of their guests’ departure at sunrise next morning. She determined to be awake and see them off. Already she was planning details of their next visit when they stopped to attend the Treaty Day celebration and report on Hugh’s mine.

Ken and Jerry called it Ann’s and Philip’s mine. Being a possible heiress to a gold mine, even a valueless one, was more thrilling to Ann than she’d admit. She’d tried to seem as unimpressed as Hugh, but Ken had teased her about pretending.

Ken noticed everything. She wondered if he’d thought her awkward and unsure because she didn’t dive well. Try as she would, she couldn’t keep her feet together and make a slender arc of her body. She determined to practice every day and astonish Ken with her skill on his return.

Ann went downstairs and found Philip and her mother in the kitchen. Mrs. Jackman was taking a pie out of the oven. The meringue was a deep golden brown.

“So do Jerry and Philip,” her mother reminded her. She looked up and then demanded, “Ann, what have you done to your hair?”

Ann didn’t answer. If her mother didn’t understand that it was time she stopped looking like a child, there was no use trying to explain.

“Makes her look like a skinned rabbit,” Philip said with the frankness of a younger brother. “Nobody’d ever guess she had a good head of hair.”

Ann felt deflated, but it was too late to change. At any moment Ken and Jerry would be back from their tent. Her mother felt sorry for her.

“We may like it better when we’ve become accustomed to it,” she said. “And it’s fun to try experiments. Philip, will you please get me some fine wood for a quick biscuit fire?” She waited until Philip had gone out the door. “Don’t look so woebegone about your hair,” she said. “Philip didn’t mean to bother you.”

“But why would he say a thing like that tonight when he knew I wanted to look—”

“Yes, he did know,” her mother said. “But have you thought that perhaps this visit has been a bit hard for Philip? He’s felt out of things. Ken and Jerry are both so much older.”

“And Jerry admires Ken. You’ve admired Ken. For two days Philip has heard nothing but ‘Ken thinks this,’ and ‘Ken says that,’ and ‘Ken’s been there.’ ”

“You said yourself that we’ve been away from people for so long it would do us good to be with outsiders,” Ann argued. “Ken has been lots of places even Jerry hasn’t. Why, even the older boys at school look up to Ken. Jerry told me so himself. He’s terribly proud of Ken.”

“So I’ve noticed,” her mother said. “But it’s hard on Philip to be reminded so often that he is the youngest.”

Mrs. Jackman seldom interfered between her children. Although Ann and Philip had carried on a friendly rivalry, there’d been no question of their devotion. Ann was really troubled.

“Philip knows how I feel about him, Mother,” she said. “Think of the things we’ve done together. His being younger never made the least bit of difference.”

“It never has,” her mother said. “You’ve been closer than most brothers and sisters. That’s why these last two days may have upset him.” She paused, and then she added, “Philip has never rushed into things as you do. Give him time to form his own opinions.”

As Ann set the table she wondered about Philip. He was like her mother, dependable and stalwart, but always thoughtful. They understood each other. Ann had really discovered Philip in the three years in the north, and now she wondered if Philip had been a bit jealous. Everyone had liked Ken. Even Mr. Sloane had turned to him as often as to Jerry. Sometimes she had thought he wished Jerry was a little more like Ken, always ready for any situation. It would be understandable.

She heard voices on the veranda and looked out to see Mr. Sloane and her father. They’d spent hours and hours together. When she joined them, Mr. Sloane smiled and made room for her to sit beside him. He had a way of making everyone feel wanted in a group. He went on with the conversation.

“What I envy you the most, Dave, is this business of living you’ve got going up here,” he said.

“You’re wrong, Dave. Work and living don’t always go together. In the city they often fail to.”

“Look at Jerry. Everything he’s done, or I’ve done for him, has been a preparation for the time when he really begins to live. He’s had no chance to prove himself. But you and Philip and Ann—you’ve worked together.”

“That’s what I’m trying to say. The bush is a natural proving ground. You four have gone through real times together. Your real job in life can be shared here. But my job of living and Jerry’s couldn’t go hand in hand. Even this trip, the thing we’ve planned on doing together, has had to be put off year after year because I’ve been too busy. Jerry’s never been up against things. Even my life has been safe and protected the last fifteen years.”

“Trouble with you, John, is that you’ve been transplanted. You’re like I’d be if somebody had caught me young enough to put me behind a desk. I’d always have worried for fear I’d go soft if I really got up against it with only my two hands to depend on.”

“Every man thinks about that, Dave. The summer on the Albany did something for me. I’ve never been able to put it into words for Jerry, but I’ve wanted him to know it. I’ve tried to tell him.”

“Maybe you tried too hard. All this talk about obstacles and the test of courage would make any fellow begin to wonder about—”

He broke off as Jerry and Ken came up the trail. Ann looked at Jerry, suddenly understanding the hesitancy she had sometimes sensed in him. She and Philip would have been panic-stricken if that first year in the wilderness had been made to seem so terribly important.

“We were talking wilderness,” Mr. Sloane said to the boys. “Our host seems to think I exaggerate the moral advantages of hardship, or maybe even the hardships themselves.”

“You couldn’t exaggerate the hardship of my cooking,” Ken said. “He’ll be a better man when he gets back, Mr. Jackman.”

They were still laughing when Philip and Hugh joined them. Ann stood up to go in and help with the supper. Ken looked at her approvingly.

“And somebody let a canoe get away,” Hugh said. “At least, I think that’s yours floating in the lake.”

Mr. Sloane leaped to his feet. “It is our canoe,” he exclaimed, and he turned to Ken and Jerry. “How’d that happen? Who used it last?”

“I used it this afternoon,” Ken said, “but I carried it back on shore when I was through. Put it on the beach. I remember that distinctly.”

“I think you did. When you went over to the mainland, don’t you remember?”

“But that was early,” Philip protested. “Remember, Jerry? We were feeding the mink a good hour before we all went swimming.”

“And while you lads are arguing about it, the canoe is getting further,” Hugh said.

“You won’t have to again,” Hugh said. “Couldn’t find a safer place to prove that a canoe turned over on the shore with a piece of down timber across it will be there the next morning.”

After they had eaten supper they sat on the veranda. Ann loved that magic sunset hour in the north. Birds settled with soft cries and rustlings. Fish splashed in the quiet lake. The sky lighted in vivid rose and orange and the last rays of sunlight turned the green pines to bronze. It was always such a peaceful hour.

All had fallen under the evening spell when a birchbark canoe came around the end of the island. It stopped at the landing.

“For you, John,” he said. “Gillespie thought I might know where you were. I’ve told the men to wait.”

“James Adams died yesterday.” Mr. Sloane turned to the others. “He was my friend and client. His affairs are in my hands. I have no choice.”

No one spoke for a moment. Dave Jackman recovered first. He grasped the lawyer’s hand.

“That’s tough luck,” he said, and then because it didn’t seem enough, he said again, “That’s tough luck.”

Ann thought how well he took it. Mr. Sloane was not responsible, and he was the most disappointed of the trio. Everyone began to talk at once. Hugh said that if they didn’t have a railroad at Far Lake, the message would never have reached them. He’d forgotten the railroad was responsible for their presence.

“If we hadn’t insisted on a visit, that message would never have found you at Fox Island,” Mrs. Jackman said.

“Dave would have chased us and we’d had to turn back anyway,” John Sloane said. “No, Mary, this is just something that couldn’t be avoided.”

They made plans for departure. The eastbound train left early next morning. The Sloanes should start at once to reach the Far Lake station. The Indians could paddle to the Post with them.

“Two canoes will be safer,” John Sloane said. “I’ve got to catch that train. We’ll start packing.”

The Jackmans watched their guests walk down the trail. Jubilant plans had collapsed so suddenly it didn’t seem possible the canoe trip was ended before it had started.

Ann thought of funny little things. She wouldn’t be able to astonish Ken with her skill in diving. And Jerry must wait another year to prove he could go up against things.

“We’d better give ’em a hand,” Dave Jackman said. “They’ve had time enough to talk things over. I’m sorry for those lads.”

“What else can they do?” Mrs. Jackman asked. “They wouldn’t care to stay on this fur farm all summer.”

“You mean for them to take the trip anyway!” Philip exclaimed. “I bet Jerry would tackle it in a minute.”

“Now that John has run out on me on the mine, I’ll have to do the job myself,” Hugh said. “I’ll need some husky paddlers. Say two, or maybe four.”

Ann turned to Philip. He was as eager as she was. It should be four. She and Philip should be the ones to help Hugh get his mine.

“First time I ever heard you admit Ann wasn’t as good in the bush as Philip,” Hugh said.

“She’s every bit as good. But we want her home this summer. She’ll be leaving soon enough.”

“Might be good practice in getting used to her being away,” the old trapper said.

“But, Hugh!” Ann’s mother protested. “There are so many reasons why Ann and Philip can’t go.”

“They’ll be back in three weeks,” Hugh reminded her. “Leaves you a whole month before Ann goes to school.”

“No one’s asked Ann how she feels,” her father said. “How about it, Ann?”

Ann gulped. She wanted to please her mother. She ought to say she didn’t wish to go, but she’d never wanted to go anywhere quite so badly. Her father wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t expect the truth.

“I’d like to go,” she said at last. “We’d have fun. And it’s really Philip’s and my job to help Hugh get that gold mine.”

“That settles it,” her father said. “Let’s talk to John before they get packed.”

The Sloane camp was almost dismantled. The tent was down and the big duffle bags bulged with equipment. Mr. Sloane was folding a blanket. He didn’t wait for Hugh to finish speaking.

“Go with you!” he said. “They’re in luck to have the chance. How about it, boys?”

Ken dumped sweaters, shoes and fishing tackle out of a canvas roll. “Come on, things!” he shouted. “We’re going north.”

“Thank you, sir,” he said, and then he laughed. “I guess we’d better start saying Hugh right now.”

It had happened so suddenly, Ann was still breathless when they walked to Mis-tow-gon’s birchbark with Mr. Sloane. The sense of defeat had lifted. Everyone was happy. Mr. Sloane was making plans to meet Ken and Jerry at Far Lake on their return.

“I’ll get things straightened around in time so I’ll have at least a week at Far Lake,” he said.

“Thank you, John.” The trapper showed his pleasure. “The way Dave and the missus fought the idea, I’d begun to wonder if I was fitten to take anybody north.”

“It wasn’t that, Hugh,” Mrs. Jackman said. “It was only—” She hesitated. “I’d forgotten the joy of a canoe trip. I should have remembered. Dave and I still talk about our first summer on the Brule.”

They waved Mr. Sloane out of sight and then walked up the trail. Ken and Jerry turned to their camp. Their tent must be set up again, and Hugh said they must start early if they made the first night’s camp at the old Hudson’s Bay Post on Caribou Lake.

“About time for me to turn in,” Hugh said as he stopped at the path which led to his small cabin. “I’m getting up before daybreak.”

“Call me,” Dave Jackman said. “There’s lots to do. Planning to take the big tent for you fellows? Ann can use the Sloanes’. What canoe are you taking?”

“My fifteen-foot Peterborough holds two,” Hugh replied. “Ann and Philip can shove that right along. I ought to paddle with the lads. They don’t know the Ojibwa stroke.”

“And Ken doesn’t like it,” Ann said. “He says he doesn’t feel he’s getting anywhere.”

“Good idea for Ann and Philip to paddle together,” Dave Jackman said. “They’ll have no trouble. Be a lot easier for them than trying to change their stroke.”

Next morning, as they ate a pre-sunrise breakfast, Ann wondered if she’d slept at all. Her pack and Philip’s and the packsacks containing tent and food and blankets were on the veranda when Jerry and Ken came up to eat flapjacks and eggs and bacon with the Jackmans.

They walked to the shore as the first clear golden rays of sunlight gilded the lake.

“Seein’ how you lads started out with three, we might as well go on that way,” Hugh said as he put his pack into the larger canvas canoe.

Ann and Philip took their places in the Peterborough, Ann in the bow and Philip in the stern.

Far Lake lay smooth and rosy in the sunrise, as though drenched in opalescent paint. Rocks, islets, and even a curious loon which stopped to watch them, seemed to ride high above the water, distorted in the strange early morning mirage. The air was fresh and keen.

The exhilaration of the newborn day caught at Ann. Philip’s strokes and hers fell into rhythm. Both loved the short quick Ojibwa thrust and the fast recovery. Their canoe surged forward and the sound of water against the bow changed from a gay tinkle into a deeper, throaty tone.

In a few minutes the Jackmans’ canoe was far ahead. Ann and Philip waited for the others to catch up.

“It takes you further with less effort,” Hugh commented. “Try it once. Bowman sets the pace.”

Ken was in the bow. Ann slowed her own stroke. It was good to have another canoe alongside. She had envied the Indians their flotilla method when whole villages traveled together and laughter and remarks passed from one canoe to another. The morning sped.

“We’re making good time,” Hugh said at their noon stop. “We’ll soon reach the river.”

Wolf Jaw River connected Far Lake with Lake Caribou. The Hudson’s Bay Post lay halfway down the lake. Philip said they might make camp in time to have a swim.

They had finished their noon meal and packed the dishes. Hugh was having his noon pipe as they lay on the beach in the warm sun. Ken opened his eyes and stretched.

“If this is going up against things, I can take it. Never was more comfortable in my life.”

“Wait till you’ve made those long portages,” Hugh said. “How are you lads at packing?”

It was mid-afternoon when they reached a swift place in the river where the current carried the canoes headlong between the banks. They could hear the dull roar of rapids around a bend. Hugh pointed to the take-off of the portage.

“An Indian tried it once,” Hugh said. “That’s how the Jackmans got Ogema. The dog lost a master.”

Hugh swung the larger canoe up and over and lowered it onto his shoulders. As he started across the portage he said, “I’ll carry the Peterborough on my second load.”

“Then we’ll take turns,” Jerry said. “I’ll toss you for the first carry.”

Ken won the toss. Philip and Jerry shouldered packsacks. Ann picked up the lighter articles, ax, fishing tackle, and her small pack. Halfway across the portage they met Hugh on his way back for a second load. He grinned as he saw the canoe riding on Ken’s shoulders.

At the end of the trail Philip and Jerry dropped their loads and started on the second trip. Ken lowered the canoe.

“That was easy,” he said. “I always thought guides made too much fuss about canoes.”

“No,” he admitted, and then he grinned. “Don’t tell on me. I didn’t want Hugh thinking he’d taken out a couple of greenhorns.”

“But you swung it up as though you’d been making portages for years,” Ann said.

An hour later they left the river and turned north on Lake Caribou. It would be another hour before the Hudson’s Bay Post would be in sight. Ann’s shoulder muscles ached. It was a long time since she had taken a full day’s paddle. But she kept on doggedly, setting the regular pace which meant so much to the stern paddler.

She looked at the other canoe. The paddlers had long since abandoned the Ojibwa stroke. Ken and Jerry were weary, but Hugh seemed as fresh as when he’d started in the early morning. Hugh was made of hickory and rawhide, her father always said.

Hugh began to sing, and as the words of an old paddle song of the early voyageurs rang across the water, paddles quickened. Philip knew the words and joined Hugh, and then Ann, and finally Ken and Jerry. The two canoes swept down the lake, weary muscles completely forgotten.

Ann watched for the first sight of the Hudson’s Bay Post with mixed emotions. The dwelling house would remind her of good times she’d had on former visits, but that was ended now. The Post was deserted. She’d miss Louise, the Indian cook, Michel, the half-breed clerk, and the Indian families, employees of the Company. Most of all she dreaded Lake Caribou without Mr. Gillespie. She had known him in so many roles, a genial host, a good friend, and the dignified overlord of a great district. The deserted trading station of the Ancient Company of Gentlemen Adventurers Trading into Hudson Bay would be only an empty shell without him.

From the lake, the cluster of whitewashed buildings looked much the same. So did the green lawn inside the picket fence enclosing the two-storied dwelling house. But no smoke came from the chimneys. No red ensign floated from the flag pole. No one moved in the great clearing.

“There’s no one to stop us from putting up our tents on the lawn,” he said.

Philip had never forgotten that on their first visit, Michel had forbidden them even to step inside the picket fence during the trader’s absence.

The white tents looked well on the green lawn. Ann, with a tent all her own, felt palatial in her solitary grandeur.

Even in the trader’s permanent absence, no hunter would camp on the green lawn. While Hugh watched his mulligan, the others went to call. A young Indian was sitting before the wigwam.

Ann remembered him and the pretty girl he had married when the Indians picked blueberries the previous summer.

He pointed to the wigwam. A moment later Go-be pulled back the blanket door. Her face broke into smiles when she saw the Jackmans. Ann and Philip forgot Ken and Jerry didn’t understand Ojibwa as the Indian language crackled back and forth between the four. But as the Indians began to tell their story and Ann and Philip looked serious, even the onlookers realized something was wrong.

“It’s her baby,” she said. “She hasn’t any milk to feed it and it’s very sick. They started for the Post but now they’re afraid to travel. They think it’s going to die.”

Go-be led Ann into the wigwam. The baby was wrapped cocoon-wise in a dirty blanket. Its features were thin and drawn, and it set up a feeble wail.

The baby was very ill. Ann couldn’t even guess how ill, but the frightened mother turned to her with such hope and faith Ann couldn’t bear to admit her own sense of helplessness.

When Ann saw the filthy mess they’d been trying to feed the child she didn’t wonder. She told Go-be not to give the baby anything until she returned.

“It was the color of my hair, not me,” Ann said, and she explained the christening.

The name had been given during her first visit to the Hudson’s Bay Post three years before, because a mop of unruly pale blonde hair had fascinated the Indian women of the district. Now her hair framed her face in orderly waves and had become deep golden.

Ann had grown fond of the name. It had greeted her in soft old women’s voices on many portages. It had been called from passing birchbark canoes. All the Ojibwa youngsters used it and Ann knew that when the Indians said it they no longer referred to the long-legged youngster whose pale hair had astonished the dark race. They meant, as Go-be and Nee-dah-boy meant, to say “my friend.”

“Not much,” Ann said. “But I know more than Go-be. You should see that filthy blanket! At least I can get the baby clean.”

“Ought to be able to find some sort of bottle and a piece of rubber around the post,” Hugh said. “Remember how your mother rigged up a nursing bottle for the fox cubs?”

Ann remembered that anxious morning very well. The cubs had refused all feeding methods until the Jackmans had turned to a cat for a foster mother. Ann hoped babies were more adaptable than foxes.

If anyone could contrive a nursing bottle from the discards of a fur post, it would be Hugh, Ann thought.

At the wigwam Ann found the young parents sitting before a smoldering fire. They were waiting for her. Their excited Ojibwa filled the wigwam as Ann laid out her nurse’s equipment. It was a strange but practical assortment—fresh towels, a sewing kit, boiled water, and an old shirt and sweater of her own which she hoped to transform into baby clothes. A sick baby should certainly wear a woolen shirt.

She sponged and dressed the baby. Go-be looked on with admiration as Ann transformed her cotton shirt into a clean outer garment for the child. Ann’s efforts to administer boiled water from a spoon were unsuccessful. The baby turned its head away.

As Ann hurried back to camp she wondered what she could do if Hugh had failed her. The baby must eat soon.

Hugh sat before the campfire working on an old hot water bottle. He grinned. Beside him were a half dozen medicine bottles of varying shapes and sizes.

“Each has got to be rigged up different,” he said. “But I got a lot of wire.”

Dusk came before Ann had boiled a bottle and filled it with diluted canned milk, and Hugh had wired a crude rubber nipple to the neck.

Everyone walked to the wigwam. The men waited outside with the father while Go-be and Ann tried out the bottle. The baby suckled.

Then Go-be said the words over again, and many times, in Ojibwa. Nee-dah-boy shook Ann’s hand and shook Hugh’s and then shook hands with Philip, Ken, and Jerry. It became one of those grand hand-shaking celebrations the Indians loved.

“I never thought I’d rig up a nursing bottle,” Hugh said as they walked back to camp.

Ann was tired. She’d been up since daybreak. As she fell asleep she wondered if she would even hear Go-be should she call.

Next morning no one spoke of departing. Ann plunged into baby culture as she cooked and strained rice gruel, boiled bottles, mixed infant’s food, and rushed back and forth between camp and wigwam. Three years of visiting Ojibwa homes had taught Ann not to trust Go-be’s sketchy housekeeping methods.

“We can make up a day easy,” Hugh assured her. “We’ll just have to paddle harder.”

Ann dedicated the afternoon to nursing. While her charge slept, Ann sat with the mother. Until now Ann had spoken only a few words to the girl, whom she remembered as having been the prettiest and merriest of Sho-shun’s daughters. She’d been surprised to hear that Go-be was old enough to be married. But now it was strange how close they seemed as they sat hour after hour sharing the same anxiety.

By supper time Ann thought the baby was better. Go-be thought so too. At least the thin, terrifying wail had ceased. When Ann left for camp she told the mother to call her in the night if the child seemed worse.

The boys had spent the afternoon investigating the trade shop, fur loft, employees’ cabins, fur press, and dwelling house. Philip, who was crow-like about metal, had collected a great heap of things discarded when the company moved to the railroad.

“We can pick them up on our way home,” he said. “Everything comes in handy in the bush.”

As they sat around the evening campfire, Hugh brought up the subject of departure next morning. Ann said she wasn’t sure the baby could be left so soon. Go-be and Nee-dah-boy were anxious to reach the Hudson’s Bay Post, but Ann doubted if the baby was well enough to travel.

“Chances are they’ll start soon as our backs are turned,” Hugh said. “Every Indian in this district wants to spend the summer watching trains.”

Hugh did not “hold with” Indians. Ann feared Ken and Jerry would form a wrong impression of the natives. They were hers and Philip’s friends. She began to talk of the Indians they’d known—Pe-tah-bo and Wen-dah-ban and Wah-be-goon and Es-quay and her husband, John Ottertail. She and Philip spent the evening talking of the old days when the Indians had gathered at the Post for gossip and trading, and when the trade shop had offered only necessities to meet the wants of a simple people. Then Mr. Gillespie had been the real overlord of a great district and dispensed justice with sympathy and wisdom. The summers had been happy seasons when the Indians fished, hunted, visited, and held native dances.

“Even Treaty Day won’t be so much fun this year,” she said. “Everything is different since the railroad came.”

Ann laughed with the others. She had sounded like an early settler. For that matter, she really was.

“Gillespie may think he’s the overlord of a district,” Hugh said, “but he’s not been able to drive those nitchies into the bush this summer. Bet we don’t see one of them north of here.”

In the morning Ann said she’d have to go to the wigwam and make sure the baby was really better.

“Don’t stay too long,” Hugh warned. “There’s big stretches on those lakes ahead. Like to have ’em behind us before the wind gets to blowing.”

Ann bathed and fed the baby and gave last instructions. The child was better and Go-be was less forlorn and frightened. She took the six feedings Ann had prepared and promised to boil the bottles before she used them again. Ann repeated the formula many times and hoped Go-be understood the proper proportions of milk and gruel. Go-be said, “Nish-i-shin, nish-i-shin,” meaning “good” to reassure her, and Nee-dah-boy backed up his wife’s “Nish-i-shins” with his own. Their good-bys were pathetically grateful.

Ann’s sense of well-doing was lessened somewhat by Hugh’s anxiety to get away. At the camp she found the canoes already loaded.

“There’s wind in those clouds,” he said. “If it catches us in the middle of Spider Lake, we’ll have tough going.”

“That’s what we get for having Florence Nightingale along,” Ken said. “But I’m willing to pay for her good deeds.”

Ann knew they might pay for the loss of those precious morning hours. When they were in the canoe, she asked Philip if he minded.

They were traveling an old waterway of the north, following a route of one of the early fur traders. Lake Caribou was connected with Spider Lake by two small lakes with portages between.

Ken’s turn at the rapids had not been half as long. Jerry started off. He didn’t carry the canoe as jauntily as Ken. His face wore a do-or-die expression, but he didn’t set down his load until he reached the end. He was out of breath, but triumphant.

They crossed the first small lake. Ken’s carry to the next one was only a lift-over in a short strip of muskeg.

“Sure,” Jerry said before Ken could answer. “Every time we lift the canoe it’s an official portage.”

“Jerry’s out of luck today,” Hugh said. “The portage into Spider Lake is another long one.”

Jerry crossed the three quarters of a mile portage into Spider Lake. He staggered at the finish, but he was grinning. When the others commiserated with him he laughed.

Hugh looked at the lake. A wind was blowing. Waves rolled toward them, some breaking in white caps. It was mid-afternoon.

“Probably get nasty in the next two hours,” Hugh said. “It’ll catch us in the big stretch.”

Spider Lake was well named, a central body with long outspreading arms. In the middle they would face a wind coming from the two channels which bore north. Ann knew what that meant, and she regretted the morning delay. If she hadn’t insisted on seeing the baby before they left, they would have been across Spider Lake by now. She suggested they make camp and cross early next morning.

“We might be in for a few days’ blow,” Hugh said. “Dogtooth, just ahead, is a lot worse than Spider. I was planning we’d get across the portage to give us an early shot at it tomorrow.”

They started out. Ann and Philip had often paddled against a stiffer wind but she was glad he was her stern paddler. She could count on Philip. Never relaxing for an instant, he estimated every wave and balanced against it. Hugh was doing the same in the other canoe.

Ann’s job was easier. She had only to keep paddling, but that was hard work. Against the wind, the canoe lost its aliveness and dragged like a dead weight. Ann could only dip, pull, dip, pull until her shoulders ached. And this would go on for hours. She looked ahead. The other shore seemed miles away.

No one sang or talked now. They bent their backs to the steady, dreary slog. Ann watched the shore and sometimes doubted if their canoe was making headway. She thought they’d spent hours crossing the large main body, but at last the canoes turned down one of the long arms. Here, at least, they’d have to fight only the wind in one channel.

But the wind was dead against them and the portage was at the very tip of the long arm. When at last they reached it, Ann scrambled out. Her knees were numb and there was a hot pain between her shoulders. Ken and Jerry threw themselves flat on the ground.

“I told you it was tough country,” Hugh said as he turned a canoe over his shoulders and started up the trail.

“There’d have to be a hill on my carry tonight,” Ken said. “This evens our luck, Jerry.”

When they reached the end of the portage Hugh was building the cooking crane. That completed, he drove a forked stake into the ground and trimmed another as a long handle for the frying pan.

Ann had hoped the stake meant that, for she knew Hugh’s bannocks, rich and delicately browned, so tender they melted in the mouth. She’d not expected such elaborate cooking tonight. She was too tired to take an interest in campmaking. Only conscience drove her, and Ken’s bough beds were not so carefully tufted.

Hugh watched his bannock. When it had risen and the bottom was a golden brown, he turned it tenderly. His manner was almost reverent when he slid the big cake over.

“I can flip ’em,” he said to Ken. “But it seems wicked to do that to a bannock.”

The others sat and watched. Philip said he didn’t think he could bear to wait another minute. Hugh examined the bannock, and took it from the fire.

“Only thing that’s better than a bannock is two of them,” Philip said as he finished the last small piece and licked his fingers.

“And I thought I could make baking powder biscuits!” Ken said. “Wait till I show those eastern guides this one.”

It was still light when they went to bed. Ann sank into her bough bed and the perfume of balsam filled the tent. What had been weariness was now only a delicious languor.

She wakened to full moonlight. The beauty of it caught her throat. Instantly she was wide awake. The shadows of pine branches were dark etchings on the canvas overhead. The fringe of jackpines at her doorstep was lovely in the soft light. The lake was a shimmering mirror. It was a night of magic.

She heard a sound and saw Hugh sitting on a large flat rock beside the two canoes.

“Hugh! I’m so glad you couldn’t sleep either,” she whispered. “It’s so lovely.”

Hugh didn’t seem to be surprised by her coming. He motioned for her to sit beside him.

She wondered about Hugh. They knew so little about him, and yet in other ways they knew as much as anyone could know about another. She’d often wondered what were his thoughts when he went off to his little cabin. He shared their lives completely, was so close, and yet he was remote.

“It’s funny, but I was thinking about that when you came out. On a night like this a man remembers things.”

“Never made it a habit to talk,” he said. “Maybe that’s why I never told you folks. Didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me.”

“Tonight I was thinking about my little girl. She’d be older than you, but sometimes I wonder, had she lived, if she wouldn’t have looked like you. She had a lot of yellow hair.”

Suddenly Ann understood so many things. That was why she had been Hugh’s favorite. She put her hand on his arm.

“As fine a family as any man ever had. We’d been married just five years. The little girl was two.”

“Last time I saw ’em they was standing in the door waving at me. That was twenty years ago in a little town in Minnesota. I was going out to draw my summer’s pay. Had a list of things to bring ’em.” He paused and then asked, “I don’t suppose you ever heard about the Hinkley forest fire that killed four hundred people?”

“There,” and Hugh put his arm around her. “I shouldn’t have told you. Never wanted you to feel sorry for me. But sometimes, when I get to thinking about them, it’s made easier if I can get you something I know you want.”

“You always have, Hugh.” She remembered how many times he had come to her support. “Even this trip. You don’t believe in that gold mine. You only came because you knew how much I wanted to. Dad and Mother never would have let me go if it hadn’t been for you.”

“I never went against your folks,” Hugh said. “There’s as fine a pair as ever walked. But maybe they wouldn’t have thought of this trip before it was too late. John and the lads had started in to pack.”

“Sure. A trip like this can be something to remember. I wanted you to take it as a present when you go off to school.”

Next morning Ann wondered if she could have dreamed that moonlight talk, for Hugh’s manner was so usual. He was cheerful, competent, and without the slightest trace of sadness. This was the daytime Hugh she’d known. But she determined the journey north would be a present for both of them. She’d do her share to make it so happy Hugh would remember it always. In the days which followed she became so solicitous for him that Philip laughed at her.

“You don’t have to watch out for him,” he said. “Old as Hugh is, he can outpaddle any of us.”

Ann admitted Hugh was tireless. He was fresher than the others after a long day in the canoe. He was the last to go to bed and the first to waken in the morning. He never lost his zest. It was always Hugh who saw game. He would point out a bear swimming, a moose and a calf feeding, or a small animal running on the shore.

“I’ll put the canoe so close you can shove the cameras in its face,” he’d whisper to Ken and Jerry.

Then he’d make good his promise with a stroke under water which didn’t reveal the slightest movement of arms or shoulders. The canoe made stealthy headway. And suddenly the moose or bear or fox or mink, or whatever was their quarry, would find himself being photographed. Ann had never hunted with a camera. She resolved to own one.

“Notice how Jerry’s got the Ojibwa stroke?” he asked. “He keeps me humpin’.”

Jerry’s paddle muscles had hardened. So had his packing muscles in the days when his bad luck on portages continued.

“Pretty near guess the length of the carry by whose turn it is with the canoe,” Hugh said after a long portage.

Each day was an adventure, and each day was different. Sometimes miles of waterway fell magically astern. On others they had to sneak along a lee shore, or even spend hours waiting, windbound, until they could make a crossing. There were stretches on which their way lay clear before them, and places where they lost a half day hunting the take-off of a portage. Occasionally they had to retrace their route and search a second, and even third arm, before they found egress from a lake. It was a country of broken land and water. Often bays, arms, even lakes, were not shown on the small scale map, or shores were indicated by dotted lines. Then to find a route which turned and twisted through lakes and rivers was like trying to follow a bewildering maze.

But always they were pressing north, farther north than Ann had ever been. That in itself was thrilling.

“And we have to pack back over every portage,” Ken said. “Why don’t we eat the grub going up and pack back light? We could live on fish.”

“Better snag a pike every chance we get,” Hugh said. “No one ever starved if he had food to carry home.”

They were watching a northern sunset. Ann was very comfortable, stretched out on a pine needle carpet. Also she had eaten a delicious supper. Starvation seemed wholly an academic matter.

“The fish that means the difference between eating or going hungry is hard to catch,” Hugh warned him. “Fellow gets too anxious.”

“Don’t believe he would,” Hugh said confidently. “When anything means a lot to Philip he goes at it careful.”

“Some of the early explorers lived on the country,” Ken said. “Survival is only a matter of keeping your wits about you.”

“But no man knows if he can keep his wits about him,” Hugh said. “That’s why getting lost is dangerous. Some folks panic easy. Where one fellow will figure out the way home, the next six will run screamin’ through the bush.”

Ann looked around at their small circle and wondered which of them would keep his wits in real danger. There was no way of guessing. She and Philip had been lost in a swamp. Another time they had been caught in a blizzard and made a two day camp. Neither time had they been terribly frightened, but neither time had they been hungry.

Hugh, of course, would come through any test. There was iron in him. She looked at the others. Ken? He’d use his wits. Fear would never dull his keenness, and he was always ready to meet a situation. Jerry? He would try. There was something dogged in him. But would that be enough?

Then she shook herself. It was silly even to think of such things. They weren’t explorers or early fur traders. They were campers, bulwarked by food and shelter. Hugh answered her unspoken thoughts.

“In a empty country like this, a fellow gets to talking about things that ain’t likely to ever happen.” He yawned. “It’s time for bed. Got a sunrise start tomorrow.”

Hugh had become a driver. He worried as they fell behind their schedule. They’d not made up the day lost at the Hudson’s Bay Post, and they’d lost still another in windbound hours. The mine was several days away.

“Don’t want the Missus and Dave to start worrying,” Hugh said. “Promised to be back at Fox Island in three weeks.”

The next afternoon Jerry’s portage luck turned, and as is apt to be the way with luck, it turned spectacularly. Ken’s turn had come to carry a canoe and Hugh said nothing as he shouldered his craft and started up the trail. They straggled along single file. When the others passed Ken, he was puffing.

Ann knew it was a long one. Her arms ached from gripping an assortment of coats, cameras, fishing tackle, and small oddments which no one ever remembered to put in the packsacks. She grew increasingly resentful of this practice as she walked on and on. They reached the end of the portage as Hugh was starting back for his second load.

“I don’t believe it,” he said. “I don’t believe there’s another lake ahead of us. I’ll be packing this canoe the rest of the summer.”

The barest trace of a smile crinkled a corner of Hugh’s mouth. Philip laughed aloud. Jerry joined him, and then Ann, and finally Ken himself. They stood in the trail laughing until the tears ran.

“Laugh, confound you, laugh!” he said. “But don’t mention luck to me again!”

Jerry offered to carry Ken’s second load of duffle for him. Ken hesitated a moment.

“Thanks,” he said. “I guess this would make a couple of official portages.”

Hugh said they’d all give Jerry a lift with Ken’s share and still clean up in two trips. Then he chuckled. “But who’d ’a’ thought Ken would draw the mile and a halfer.”

The joke was still good that evening at camp. Next morning it wore thin, however, when Ken continued to draw the longer portages. They’d struck a chain of small lakes, strung together like a necklace, and it seemed that they walked and packed as many miles as they paddled.

“Aren’t there any rivers in this country?” Ken demanded as he set the canoe down at the end of his third portage. “Call this a waterway! I could have found a better.”

“Those old fur traders generally knew what they was doing when they laid out a route,” Hugh said with a suggestion of a rebuke in his voice.

In the awkward pause which followed, Ken looked uncomfortable. They loaded the canoes in silence and started across the lake.

“Hugh isn’t going to stand for Ken’s grouching,” Philip said when he and Ann were out of earshot. “Hugh sounded mad.”

“He wasn’t really mad,” Ann said. “Besides, he knows nobody thinks a joke’s so funny when it’s on him.”

“He doesn’t!” Ann retorted crossly. “Ken laughed as much as we did about the first long portage. Anyone gets tired of a joke after a while.”

Ann had thought of that. But it was like Philip to remind her. Once he gave his friendship, he gave it unstintingly. She wished he’d search as earnestly for qualities to admire in Ken.

Philip didn’t answer. As they paddled in silence, Ann began to regret her speech. Philip could never be prodded, but usually he was fair-minded.

“I only meant we’d have a better time if we all liked each other,” Ann said.

“I’m having a fine time anyway. Gosh, Ann! Wouldn’t it have been awful if we’d missed this trip.”

Even Hugh made amends to Ken as they shouldered their loads at the next portage.

“When you see the size of Lake Wabigoon you’ll think it was worth hitting for through that chain o’ lakes,” he said. “We’ll have a chance to rest our backs while we paddle the length of her.”

Lake Wabigoon meant they were nearing the end of their outward journey, for it was the last large lake before they reached Lake Mystery and the gold mine. Even the name of that lake promised adventure. Philip asked how soon they’d reach the mine.

As they walked across the portage, Ann heard wind soughing in the spruce trees. The blue lake was splashed with foaming white caps. During lunch, Hugh looked often at the big stretch. Philip started to stow the dishes.

“Might as well save yourself the trouble,” Hugh said. “We’d better camp right here. In another hour the stretch will be rolling.”

They enjoyed the windbound camp. Everyone washed shirts and socks. Ken and Jerry caught three fish. Philip found a patch of raspberries and Ann made a berry pie. It received even more applause than Hugh’s bannock.

“No girl with hair like yours has a right to be a good cook, too.” Ken looked at her with open approval. “Why don’t we have pie often?”

“Ain’t given Ann much chance with that camp oven,” Hugh said. “Maybe tomorrow she’ll get a good crack at it.”

“Closeness ain’t always a matter o’ miles,” Hugh said. “Once I waited four days to cross a five mile lake.”

They became wind conscious. It was the last thing Ann heard as she went to sleep. She heard it blowing in the night, and it was the first sound in the morning. She looked out of the tent at swaying spruce tops. She expected the news she heard at breakfast.

“Can’t help that none,” Hugh said. “And Dave will figure on a bit o’ wind.”

“We’ll never get to the gold mine if we stop for every breeze,” Ken argued.

“There’s more’n a breeze in them. Might get nasty in the big stretch. I’m figuring we’ll give it a chance to blow itself out.”

“I was talking about two hours from now.” The old trapper’s tone was curt.

“Hugh knows this country, Ken,” Jerry said. “He knows whether it’s safe or not.”

“That’s what I meant!” Ken said. “Hugh’s afraid we can’t take it. He wouldn’t stop for a blow like this. I’ve been in bigger ones myself.”

Hugh didn’t answer. He walked to the shore and stared off at the lake for a long time while the others waited in an uncomfortable silence. Ann couldn’t remember when even her father had ever questioned the old trapper’s judgment. She was about to tell Ken so when Hugh came back. His manner was amiable as he turned to Ken.

A half hour later they were beyond the protection of a point and headed into the northwest wind. Ann and Philip had often paddled in worse seas and they settled to the job. As they dug in their blades, keeping the canoe straight on its course, Ann began to wonder if Ken might not have been right.

White caps were breaking in the stretch where the wind had a chance at the broad expanse. Ann thought the wind was blowing harder, but she didn’t dare ask Philip. It was when she looked at the other canoe that she realized how their own was plunging. She watched the other bow run up on the hissing crests and then dive sickeningly into the trough between. Until then Ann, with her knees braced, had felt part of her own craft. But now her sense of competence left her and she wondered how long she and Philip could compel obedience from the rearing creature.

She looked at the stretch ahead. They could never make it. Nor could they turn around and permit even for a moment such waves to catch them broadside. There was nothing to do but go on. She didn’t dare look back at Philip. But she felt him there, steady, dependable, and stalwart.

“Hugh’s pointing at that island,” Philip shouted. “He wants us to bear over.”

The other canoe was already bearing in the direction of the island. Ann and Philip followed. As they drew toward it, the wind got a fresh sweep at them. Ann, in the bow, went higher, plunged deeper. At times her paddle blade could not find water, and she hung dizzily in the air, feeling helpless.

Ann doubted if they could last. But stroke by stroke they drew nearer to the island. A last gust of wind tore at them as though reluctant to permit them to escape. Then, so suddenly she couldn’t believe it possible, they were in quiet water. A little way to the side, waves were rushing past.

“Might as well make camp. There’ll be no balsam on this island, but it won’t hurt us none to sleep on spruce.”

“After this when Hugh says it’s going to blow, we’ll believe him.” Jerry looked at Ken as he spoke.

“I knew we’d make it to the island all right,” Hugh said. “And there was no harm in tryin’.”

Hugh’s tone was tempered. Ann knew he wouldn’t say, “I told you so.” But the country would say it for him. They were trapped for a windbound wait on a small island that they explored in a dismayingly short time. Then they returned to camp.

Fishing was impossible. Hugh sharpened the axes. He was never at a loss for an occupation when he had an ax. Ken and Jerry overhauled fishing tackle and watched the waves going by in an endless procession. Ann made candy and went for a walk with Philip. They sat down on a windfall. Philip stared at the white-capped stretch.

“If it hadn’t been for Ken, we wouldn’t have got caught here. What made Hugh give in to him?”

Ann didn’t answer. She’d heard someone in the brush behind them. As she waited, Hugh emerged.

“Wondered what had happened to you two. Looks like this wind’s begun to blow itself out.”

“Best way to shake down is to let a fellow prove hisself wrong,” he said. He arose and brushed spruce needles from his clothes. “Might as well be gettin’ back to camp. Nothin’ else to do but cook. Ought to have a bang-up supper.”

The next morning Hugh was proved right. The wind had blown itself out. The canoes were packed when the early breakfast was finished.

He’d not forgiven Ken for that long dreary day as quickly as had the others. Woodcraft to Philip was a serious matter.

In the afternoon they entered a river that flowed in from the west. For the first time they had the current against them.

He’d regained his cheerfulness. He even led the laughter at his own luck when it was his turn to carry the canoe on a portage which, according to the map, was more than a half mile long.

The portage trail followed the river and the noise of the rapids was in their ears. Mostly it was only fast water, too fast to be stemmed with paddles. But after a quarter of a mile, white water boiled and surged through a narrow place and then roared and lashed as it struck a rock in the middle. When Ken reached it he rested the canoe on a spruce stub and looked at the turmoil for a couple of minutes.

They continued on up river. It was hard, steady paddling. They were weary when they reached the portage which would take them into a lake route and decided to camp for the night. Next morning they carried the packs over. They had two more portages ahead, but short ones. They came in quick succession. Not until afternoon did they reach Lake Mystery.

This was the end of their outward journey. Ann wondered how the lake had got its name. There was nothing mysterious about its appearance. It looked like a hundred others in the north, its low irregular shores clothed with unending ranks of spruce, its surface broken by small islands and jagged points. To the west it stretched so far the shore was beneath the horizon.

Ann knew events, not appearances, often led to the naming of lakes by early fur traders, and she found herself dipping her paddle quietly. A voyageur may have found mystery here, and now a hundred years later she might too. Hugh’s gold mine was only a few miles ahead.

The other canoe was beside hers. No one spoke. Each looked ahead as he paddled. They had talked often of this moment. Perhaps Hugh’s claim hadn’t been jumped. Or it might have proved worthless and the thieves might have gone on. But they might be there now stealing gold that rightly belonged to Hugh Mathews.

Ann’s tension increased, and she could feel tension in the others. There was a tightening in the thrust of Philip’s paddle behind her. Jerry spoke, and his voice was low. Hugh’s pipe went out and he didn’t stop to light it.

They rounded a long point and, instead of going straight on, Hugh followed the south shore. Ann knew what that meant. He didn’t want to be seen, and her strokes became more quiet. Philip dipped a cup of water from the lake. Ann’s mouth was dry from excitement and she had a drink too. When they started after the others, Philip stopped again.

“That’s a mile and a half away,” Ken said. “You couldn’t see a canoe there.”

“Philip’s got good eyes,” Hugh said. “What’s more, they’re trained. And he ain’t got much imagination.”

“Seems like it,” Hugh said. “Which don’t change my ideas any. We’ll camp in that bay ahead, at the base of the point.”

Ann wasn’t the only one who was excited when they went ashore. They’d studied Bart’s sketch showing the location of the mine and knew it was on the other side of the point, no more than a mile away. Ann found herself whispering, but Ken and Jerry whispered too. Even Hugh seemed to use care in cutting tent and crane poles. His ax didn’t make much noise.

The evening was cool, but after supper they didn’t build a big fire. They huddled around a small one, and when the late darkness came, Ann often looked out at the black lake. She felt better when she saw Ken and Jerry look too, or lift their heads to listen. Only Philip and Hugh seemed cool and normal. Ann was proud of her brother.

“In the morning,” he said, “I’m going down this shore a ways and then cut across the point. If the mine’s been jumped, it’d be silly to come up on it in a canoe. Jumpers would have all the best of that. So I’m cutting through the bush and having a look.”

“No. If there’s no one at the mine, I’ll come back for you folks and we’ll paddle around and have a look-see.”

“I’ll look ’em over. Might be somebody Bart and me knew. They won’t see me and I’ll come back without them knowing I was there.”

“But you can’t let them steal your gold!” Ken protested. “There’s three of—” He looked at Philip. “Four of us against them.”

“Why don’t you make it five?” Hugh said. “But you never saw Ann when she’s mad. Once she—”

“Easy, lad,” Hugh cautioned. “Your father said he’d have a look if anyone had jumped my claim. That’s all the provincial police need know. My coming in your dad’s place didn’t change things.”

“If there’s only half a man there, it’ll be the same,” Hugh interrupted. “I’m not running you kids into trouble, and claim jumpers can be bad business. It’s time to turn in.”

That settled it. Even in the morning when Philip reopened the subject, Hugh was still adamant.

“It’s only half a mile across the point,” he said after breakfast. “I’ll be back in two hours, probably less.”

He looked at their set faces. They weren’t liking this, and he grinned at them.

“Just to make sure you don’t get funny notions,” he said, “I’m going to have Ann and Ken paddle me down the shore a ways, to where I can cut straight across.”

“No,” Hugh said, “because I’m not going to use one. It would only be a nuisance when I sneaked up on their camp.”

Ann and Ken took him a half mile down the shore. When Hugh stepped onto the beach and started at once into the thick spruce, Ann jumped out and ran after him.

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “I’ll take nary a chance. Promised Dave and your mother I’d have you back in three weeks, and no gold mine’s going to stop me.”

“He shouldn’t go off alone,” Ken said as they paddled away. “He thinks he’s running a kindergarten.”

“If he finds claim jumpers, we’re going to drive ’em out,” Philip insisted.

“I’m with you,” Jerry said. “Hugh’s too grand a guy to have crooks steal his gold mine.”

“He shouldn’t be taking chances alone,” Ken said. “We should have told him we were going along.”

“Hugh knows a lot about the bush,” Ann said. “When he decides anything, even Dad agrees with him.”

That didn’t stop them. The three boys talked of how they would have managed this. Eagerly they made plans, one calling for a double attack on the mine, from the water and the shore.

“Not a soul in this country,” Jerry said. “They wouldn’t be expecting anyone.”

Ann listened, and worried. She often looked at her watch, but the boys were too interested in planning a war to notice the time. After two hours had passed, she went down to the lake shore. When Hugh came out of the bush, she could paddle to meet him.

But Hugh didn’t come. Two and a half hours passed. Ann hurried back to the camp. Ken looked up and saw her face.

That started the talk all over again, only this time there was nothing to hold the three boys.

Ann was startled. Sometimes Philip did startle her with his quick flashes into maturity. And now his face was hard and desperate.

“I know this rifle,” Philip said. “I’ve killed moose and caribou with it. And I’m in the bow.”

That left Jerry in the stern, with Ann between him and Ken. They paddled swiftly, often noisily, all the way down the east side of the point. In Ann’s mind was a clear picture of the map Hugh’s old partner, Bart, had sketched. The mine was on the other side, about half way back.

Philip signaled caution and they crept around the point, close to shore. Philip took a long look, waved them on. Ann could see all the shore, sweeping in an arc, and there was no sign of anyone on it. They went on for a half mile, carefully now. Ann felt her heart thumping.

They paddled faster, hugging the shore. The muskeg gave way to rocks with thick spruce on top. Going faster now, they slipped past a higher rock and into a small bay. Philip’s paddle froze in mid-air and he jerked his head in a warning. Ann, looking past him, saw a tent and a canoe on shore.

This is the place, she thought. The claim jumpers are here. And they’ve caught Hugh!

The canoe slid on of its own momentum. The four paddlers knelt motionless, eyes on the tent, on the brush around it. They saw no movement, no person, nothing.

Something almost like a physical force pulled Ann’s head around. Two men were standing on the shore thirty feet away.

She didn’t move or speak. One man was tall and he had a horse-like face with eyes crowded close to a long thin nose. The other was a foot shorter, thick, powerful. His head was round and his face flat and brutal. Queer little feathers tickled Ann’s spine as she stared at the ugly faces.

The men stood on a flat-topped pile of crushed rock and boulders. Behind them a black hole in the rock looked like the entrance to a mine. Ann had never seen one, and she didn’t really see this one. She was thinking only of Hugh.

His voice was harsh, demanding. He wasn’t afraid, Ann thought, and she could scarcely breathe.

Al, the tall one, didn’t answer. He looked back at the brush, along the shore. Ann felt a little better when she knew he was worried. Again he looked at the canoe.

“Tourists, eh?” he said. “This is a pretty empty country, kids. And there’s no good camping places near here.”

A sick feeling seized Ann. He was telling them to go on. He didn’t want them to learn what had happened to Hugh.

“Not in this bay,” Al said. “We staked it all. We don’t stand for trespassin’.”

His voice was tight and hard. He knelt in the bow, and Ann thought of Josephine, their cat, when she crouched so tensely, waiting to spring on a chipmunk.

He stopped, whirled. Brush had crackled down the shore. Hugh stepped out and came toward them.

He came slowly, keeping an eye on the pair ashore and frowning at the four in the canoe. Al climbed back beside Shorty.

“While you came snoopin’ around here,” Al said. “You can’t fool me, Mathews.”

“Hello, Sweeny,” Hugh said mildly. “I might ’a’ known it’d be you. Bart wrote me you’d tried to jump a claim of his.”

He had come closer, always keeping an eye on the canoe. Ann knew he thought only of protecting them. She wanted to cry out, tell him to stop, to come away.

He jumped off the pile of broken rock, and Shorty followed. Hugh didn’t have a chance. He’d stepped between two boulders just as Al hit him in the face. Hugh went down. Shorty swung a shovel at his head.

Ann screamed. Philip dug in his paddle, pulling the canoe shoreward. Ann felt the thrust of Jerry’s paddle behind her.

Al and Shorty stood above Hugh now, kicking viciously at his body with heavy boots.

Philip picked up the rifle and jumped into knee-deep water. He snapped up the weapon, fired instantly. The shovel whirled from Shorty’s hand and Shorty howled with pain.

He waded ashore, rifle cocked. His face was white, and so hard Ann could not believe he was her brother.

Al and Shorty stared at him. Then Al’s eyes wavered. This was only a kid, and Al Sweeny wasn’t lying down to a kid. He stooped, reached for a piece of broken rock.

Philip fired again. A red spot appeared on Sweeny’s palm as he jerked back and yelled.

Jerry had driven the canoe ashore. It struck, and Jerry jumped into waist-deep water, splashed to the beach. Ann jumped into the water and followed Jerry.

Shorty started to edge away. One step more and he could be behind a big boulder. And Philip was watching Sweeny.

Jerry started running down the beach. He ducked into the brush. He was, Ann thought, running away.

Sweeny didn’t even look at her. He was holding his right wrist and watching the blood drop from his hand.

Ann knelt over Hugh. He lay on his back, one foot caught between two boulders. His eyes were closed. Blood streamed from a slashed scalp. Ann leaned over and listened to see if he still breathed.

“Come down to the lake,” Philip commanded Sweeny. “Next time I drill you.”

Sweeny went to the lake. He stooped and dipped his injured hand in the water. Philip backed away, rifle ready.

In a moment Shorty appeared on the beach near the claim jumpers’ tent. His hands were high above his head. Behind him was Jerry with a rifle.

“You’re the boy, Jerry!” Philip yelled. “Herd him down here with the other one. Ann, how’s Hugh?”

Ken got the cup from the bow of the canoe. He filled it and took it to Ann. His hands trembled.

“I saw the short one making a sneak,” Jerry said, “and I figured they’d have a rifle in their tent. I beat him to it.”

The two stood together, rifles ready. They were cool and determined. Ann looked at Philip with a flash of pride. She’d always known he was a fighter, but today he’d been magnificent. Even Jerry, more than three years his senior, had turned to him. She’d never forget how Philip had rushed to Hugh’s rescue.

Hugh’s eyes were closed. She bathed the blood from his face with her wet handkerchief. His lips opened and he moved his head.

They had trouble getting his foot from between the boulders. Hugh was not a big man, but now he was very heavy. He groaned as they shifted him to a level place. His eyelids flickered.

Philip and Jerry were still conferring. Ann walked over to stand beside them. She hadn’t had time even to think about what they could do with the prisoners. None of them would be safe so long as the pair was free in the bush.

“We’re going to turn them loose,” Philip said. “The tall one can’t paddle, and if they try any monkey business we can catch ’em. And throw some thirty-thirty slugs.”

“No!” Ann said. “You can’t decide that until the others come. They’ll be here any minute.”

Aloud, he said, “No use waiting. Besides I’d hate to have Dad come while they’re still here. When he sees what they’ve done to Hugh, there’s no telling how he’ll act.”

“Hear that, you two?” Philip said. “And when you leave, head down the big stretch where we can watch you. Start anything, and we’re on your trail.”

“Hold ’em here, Philip,” Jerry said. “I’ll dump their stuff in the canoe.”

He went along the shore to their tent. He was gone so long Ann turned back to Hugh. His eyes were open, and when he saw her they asked one question.

“We’re all right,” she said. “All of us. Except you. Oh, Hugh! They nearly killed you.”

She bathed his face. His scalp had been badly torn by the shovel and was still bleeding.

Jerry came back. He had pulled down the tent and dumped it and all the camp equipment into the center of the canoe. He landed and stepped out, taking a blanket with him.

Al and Shorty didn’t waste time. Al couldn’t paddle with a bullet hole through one hand, but Shorty thrust their craft away with powerful strokes.

“They won’t bother us,” Jerry said. “They’re too badly scared. How’s Hugh?”

They gathered around the injured man. For the first time, tears ran down Ann’s cheeks. Hugh looked up and smiled.

That turned them loose. Ann, Philip, and Jerry began talking at once. The two boys had been cool enough in the face of danger but now they were excited. Jerry told what Philip had done, Ann how quickly Jerry had acted, and Philip how Ann had run to Hugh and told that big bully, Al Sweeny, what she thought of him.

But suddenly Ann stopped talking and looked at Ken. He hadn’t spoken, and no one had mentioned his name. She remembered that he had done nothing until she had asked him to bring water.

Ken was staring at the ground. Ann felt sorry for him. His face was red and his lips twisted. He kept blinking his eyes. He looked up but his gaze met hers for only an instant. He hadn’t done a thing, and he knew it. He knew Ann knew it.

“Not so bad,” Hugh said. “I’m tough. So Philip plugged Sweeny in the hand, eh? That’s shootin’.”

“He knocked the shovel out of Shorty’s hand when he was hitting you with it,” Jerry said.

“That was an accident,” Philip said. “I was aiming at him, but I was in the water and my foot slipped on a rock.”

“Couple o’ good kids,” Hugh said. “And all over a no-count hole in the ground.”

“But it isn’t no-count!” Jerry exclaimed. “Look! Gold! Three little bottles of it. I got it in their tent.”

“Pounded up the quartz with a hammer and panned it out,” Hugh said. “Old Bart was right after all.”

“That’s why I loaded their canoe,” Jerry said. “I saw this when I got their rifle. And I was afraid they might have another gun there. If Shorty’d got hold of one—”

“I just did what I thought ought to be done,” Jerry said uncomfortably. “Philip’s the one who got the jump on them. But we’ve got no right to be talking this way. We’re a couple of hundred miles from Far Lake and we haven’t even found out whether Hugh can travel.”

In a first quick survey none of them, not even Hugh, could be sure of the extent of his injuries. His scalp wound had not stopped bleeding. The pain in his side made him suspect broken ribs. But his ankle worried him most.

“Caught it between two boulders when I went down,” he said. “It ought to be all right by tomorrow. It’s got to be.”

Philip found a pole, Jerry another, and they made a stretcher with the blanket Jerry had taken from the claim jumpers’ canoe.

It was the first time he had spoken. Ann felt sorry for him, but she saw that Philip and Jerry avoided meeting Ken’s eyes.

They lifted Hugh to the litter and even that slight movement caused him pain. He was chagrined.

“All I did was make trouble,” he said. “But I’ll be all right tomorrow.”

They carried Hugh to the canoe. He lay with his back propped against a thwart and his outstretched legs under another. Ann asked if he could stand it until they reached their camp.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Serves me right for rushing in when I was bushed. I’d been runnin’. Was afraid you folks would paddle over.”

“Ran into a lake that wasn’t on the map. Had to go clean around it. When I seen I lost so much time I figured you might already have left camp. So I kept on going.”

The canoe was crowded. Four paddles propelled it swiftly. No one spoke. Ann thought of many questions she wanted to ask. But Hugh came first.

At the camp they carried Hugh into the tent. While the boys put him to bed, Ann heated water. Hot applications would help a sprained ankle.

They did. Hugh stretched out and relaxed. He wanted to hear about the fight, but Philip said he was returning to the mine. The three small vials of gold, Hugh’s gold, had aroused him.

“Besides,” he said, “we want to be sure those claim jumpers don’t come back.”

Ann looked at Hugh, a question in her eyes. The old trapper nodded. He watched the two boys as they left the tent.

“Philip’s like Dave,” he said. “Can lick his weight in wildcats. That Jerry lad isn’t far behind him. From what I know of Sweeny, he’s paddlin’ yet.”

Red stained Ken’s cheeks. Ann said she was glad someone had stayed to help with the hot applications. Ken was almost pathetically eager to be of use.

“And Philip and Jerry didn’t give us a chance.” Ann felt sorry for him. “They made a team.”

In late afternoon the boys returned. They had crawled into the tunnel and discovered a vein of quartz.

“Or you could sell it when this mining district starts booming,” Jerry added.

“Gold always brings a mess of trouble,” Hugh said. “But at that, I guess you kids have earned the mine.”

Hugh was more comfortable. Ken had helped Ann bandage the scalp wound and they had taken account of his injuries. Hugh thought his ribs were broken, but his flesh was so bruised they dared not make a thorough examination. Hugh said the hot applications were soothing to his ankle. But he was still in great pain and his efforts to conceal it did not deceive them.

“This will slow us up a lot,” Hugh said. “Gives you folks the packin’ and paddlin’. For a few days I can’t do more than hobble across portages.”

Ann doubted if he could do that, but Hugh’s mortification was already so great she couldn’t bear to add to it.

“Not a chance to get to Fox Island in three weeks,” he said. “Dave and the Missus will worry.”

He had hoped to reach the mine in nine days, leaving eleven for the homeward journey, which would be against the current in the rivers. Now they were already three days behind his schedule.

“I hate to think how many more days these busted ribs of mine are going to hold us up,” Hugh said.

He closed his eyes. The shock of pain and the long day had taken toll. It was the first time Ann had seen Hugh look old or helpless. Always she had thought of him as ageless, although her mother had said he must be past sixty.

“That soup was good,” he said when it was finished. “Made a new man of me. Don’t worry. I’ll be around tomorrow.”

“Fellow his age shouldn’t bust into a fight like that,” Ken said. “He should have let us plan it with—” He broke off as he caught Philip’s swift glance. After a moment he went on, “What I mean is, if we’d been prepared we could have saved him from getting hurt.”

“And he might be hobbling in a few days and we could fix up a crutch,” Ken added. “Those old fellows are awful tough.”

“Dr. Allen will be at Far Lake on Treaty Day,” Ann said. “We must get Hugh out by then.”

Jerry, who knew more first aid than the others, said he couldn’t tell whether Hugh’s ankle was sprained or dislocated. Ann wondered if Hugh would be able to stand the pain of being carried on a stretcher. That would have to be decided next morning.

Ann hadn’t realized how tired she was until she went to bed. The long day, excitement, and now fears for Hugh had brought complete exhaustion. If only they knew how badly Hugh was injured. He’d never tell them. Even at that moment he might be growing worse.

She sat up, suddenly wide awake. She ought to sit beside him. She had thrown the blankets back when she heard Philip’s voice.

As Philip huddled beside her, Ann remembered other vigils, the night they had nursed Ogema when he was poisoned, the two day winter camp when they had been caught in a blizzard. She reached out and took Philip’s hand.

“If they’d kicked him again, I’d have killed them,” Philip said fiercely.

Ann believed him. Philip would not have faltered. The younger brother who had often looked to her for leadership was gone. Philip had grown up. Her realization made the little boy quality she remembered suddenly very precious.

“We’ll get him out, that’s what I came to tell you. We can count on Jerry.”

“Wasn’t Jerry grand today?” she said. “The way he thought to get that other rifle.”

His tone was sober. Ann squeezed his hand. What if Philip had been shot! Ann’s throat tightened. Looking backward was terrifying. Then suddenly she realized neither had thought of Ken.

“Ken will help us pack,” she said. “Even Hugh says he’s husky. You and Jerry tell him what to do.”

Philip snorted. “He’ll tell us, you mean! Didn’t you hear him blowing off at supper?”

“Let him.” Ann spoke with sudden vehemence. “At supper I thought you and Jerry were wonderful the way you didn’t say a word.”

This was like the old days when she and Philip had plotted together. She wanted to go on talking, but Philip said he was sleepy.

Ann was awake long before Philip called her. She followed him to the big tent. Hugh lay in his bed. His face was pale and pain had etched fine lines around his mouth.

“Not any more’n yesterday,” he said. “But it’s my ankle. All swelled up. Even the leg swelled. ’Fraid I ain’t going to step on it today.”

Ann tried to make her tone sound matter of fact. The news was as bad as she had expected. Two hundred miles of wilderness ahead of them and an injured man who should have a doctor!

“Guessed that’s what you folks was figuring. Woke up in the night and thought about it. If I was sure you could find the way, I’d send you out. Dave could come back and get me.”

“Do you think for a minute we’d go off and leave you!” Ann cried. “Don’t be silly.”

“Where we’d get lost without you,” Philip broke in. “Then none of us would get back to Fox Island.”

It was late when they departed. The former machine-like routine of breaking camp had been disrupted. They were short one pair of hands and had added tasks.

They’d made a blanket litter. Philip had selected poles with care and hewed the four ends to make smooth handles. They fastened the blanket firmly to the poles so the litter could be rolled and carried in a canoe.

Packs were rearranged to make room for Hugh to lie in the larger canoe. All except one packsack containing the big tent and a few blankets and another with the large reserve supply of food was crowded into the smaller Peterborough. There was hardly room for Ann and Philip.

“Never thought I’d live to be packed like a baby,” Hugh said when they carried him to the canoe and made him comfortable on a pile of blankets. “This ankle’s got to get better soon.”

“It will,” Ann said, although she knew even Hugh must realize that the ankle was badly injured.

They’d been terrified by its swelling and the pain it caused Hugh. None of them knew how to treat it. Complete rest was all they could think of. Ann was even more worried about the fractured ribs. She knew from Hugh’s breathing how they pained him. Philip said all they could do was to get him to the railroad as fast as possible. It would hurt him to travel, but it would be less dangerous than delay.

By mid-afternoon Ann began to realize more clearly what those two hundred miles would mean. Even the stop for the noon meal had taken twice as long as usual. Hugh had to be carried from the canoe to shore and back again to the canoe. Camp tasks and the care of an invalid were distributed among the four.

Hugh complained that he was a burden, but as they carried on without him they discovered how many of the tasks he’d shouldered. The old trapper had done everything so easily they had not been aware of how much he had accomplished.

More than anything else they missed their fifth paddler. They missed his singing, his laughter, and his comments. Ann tried to set the old exhilarating pace, but heaviness dragged at her spirits when she looked at the other canoe, where Hugh leaned against a thwart. Already she was fearful that a long day afloat was too much for him. And this was only the first of many days!

Ann took courage. It was better to think only of the lucky breaks ahead. Her paddle quickened. The others caught the contagion of her lifted spirits. When they made camp that night Philip said they had one day behind them, but they all ignored the fact that they’d covered only what had been a half day’s travel on the way north.

The next morning no one spoke about the portage. Hugh insisted he felt better, but he no longer made an effort to sit up.

“Long as I’m going to be packed like a baby, guess I’ll just lay back and enjoy it,” he said.

Three portages lay close together. They would be a test, their first attempt to carry Hugh any distance. If they made those portages without mishap, they’d know they could make the others. They had to make them!

At the first take-off they lifted Hugh from the canoe and found a level place for him to lie. Philip said they’d take him on the last trip. Ann looked at the heap of duffle and wondered how many trips it would require.

“We’ll get the canoes across first,” Jerry said, and he looked at Ken. “You and I’ll carry them. Turn about on the big boy. This is my turn.”

There was a new authority in Jerry’s voice. Ann caught it. Hugh looked up. He watched Jerry get the big canoe on his shoulders and start off.

“Ten days ago he couldn’t ’a’ done it,” Hugh said. “That big canoe’s a beast.”

When everything was across at last, they returned for Hugh. They had made three trips and Ann had carried packsacks.

“You folks better take a blow before you start on me,” Hugh said. “I’m worser’n any canoe.”

It was slow work. Ann and Philip, ahead, steered carefully along the rough trail so that Hugh wouldn’t be jostled. Despite their efforts, they couldn’t always keep the litter even, and when they set him down Ann saw little beads of perspiration on his forehead.

Philip said he would wrap the ends of the poles so they wouldn’t cut into their hands, but everyone agreed that litter travel was successful.

“We’ll get better at this,” Jerry said. “Pretty soon we’ll be taking you across on a dead run.”

It was a cheerful picture, but Ann doubted if that time would ever come. In the canoe again, Ann and Philip discussed the problems of the two hundred miles ahead.

“Four trips on every portage will slow us up a lot,” Philip said. “Suppose Hugh can stand it for two weeks?” He began to paddle almost savagely, and then burst out, “He’s got to stand it! Why—why—we couldn’t let anything happen to Hugh.”

“Dad always said Hugh was made of rawhide,” Ann said, and she found comfort in her remark.

They realized how much the portages would slow them as they met one after another in quick succession. On each carry the packs seemed heavier. Ann’s hands and shoulders ached and she saw lines of weariness in the faces of the others.

“We’d better call it a day,” Hugh said when they reached the river. “You folks have stood enough.”

“But we’ve got the current with us now,” Philip said. “We can make the portage around the rapids before night.”

Ann dreaded the portage around the rapids at the end of a hard day. When they were in the canoe she asked Philip if he remembered how long it was.

“Half a mile coming up,” he said. “We can cut it some by setting in below the chute.”

Ann recalled how the current flowed straight and smooth. That would save time and effort.

“And if we get that behind us tonight,” Philip said, “we’ll have an early shot at Lake Wabigoon. Those big stretches can get nasty in a wind.”

Ann smiled, thinking how much Philip was like Hugh. He had even adopted the old trapper’s phrases. He’d taken on the leadership and the job of driving, was jealous of every minute which could be spent in travel. If anyone could get Hugh out, it would be Philip. She was ashamed of having thought of her own tired muscles.

When they heard the roar of the rapids ahead, the canoes swung toward the take-off. Philip, with a swift glance, chose the level spot on which to place Hugh. Ann brought his roll of blankets and they made him comfortable for a long wait.

They were busy, rushing their tasks, except that Ken hung back. It was his turn to carry the big canoe.

Ken shrugged and turned away. He walked to the big canoe but he didn’t lift out the blanket pack or the pack containing the main supply of food. Instead, he raised the bow and pushed the canoe free.

“I’ll show you how to get the heavy loads across this portage!” he called.

Ken looked shoreward grinning. He waved his paddle in the air, and then drove out into the swift current.

Philip’s face was white. Ann and Jerry stared at each other. No one could move.

They ran down the trail as Ken disappeared around a bend. Even in her terror, Ann remembered how, on their way north, Ken had rested the canoe against a spruce stub while he studied the white turmoil around the rock below the chute.

Ken heard, swung his head to listen, then turned quickly to the roaring water ahead.

It would seem far different when you were down there in it than when you looked at it from above, Ann thought, and she knew what was in Ken’s mind in the next swift moments that seemed so long.

Ken took a quick, desperate stroke to turn to the left, then another to turn to the right.

He took no more strokes. He knelt there, stiff, paddle poised, making no effort, as the canoe dived into the chute.

The craft was not straight with the current. It swept sideways toward the rock. A wave gripped it, flipped it into the air upside down. Ken, packs, and paddles dropped into the maelstrom below.

Ken disappeared. The blanket pack floated high. The other, heavy with food, sank.

Then Ken’s head came up. He swam desperately. The current dragged him under and tossed him up. At last he made headway to the bank.

Philip and Jerry were already running down stream. Jerry stopped to pick up a long piece of drift and hold it out to Ken, but Philip ran on. An eddy caught the water-logged canoe and turned it shoreward. Philip waded into the swift water and grasped the line made fast to the bow. He pulled the canoe ashore.

Ann ran down the trail. Ken was out now, sitting on the bank. His face was white, still white from fear.

Ann drew a long breath, as if she had not breathed for hours. Suddenly she was very tired.

Ken did not lift his head, but Ann, Philip, and Jerry looked at each other. They didn’t speak. They couldn’t. They knew what the loss of that grub sack meant, what it meant to poor helpless Hugh and to themselves.

Long days of toil had stretched ahead. Now they faced long days of toil and starvation.

He and Philip ran back up the portage. Ann followed, but when she reached the take-off the two boys had already lifted the small canoe to their shoulders, one at each end. They started swiftly down stream.

“I hate him!” Ann blazed out. “I hate him! If anything happens to you because of this, I’ll never forgive him. Never!”

“Nothin’s going to happen to me,” Hugh said. “Takes more’n Ken’s foolishness to beat us. But he’s let us in for some tough times.”

The old trapper was so calm Ann was comforted despite her fear and anger. She sat down and took his hand.

“Hugh,” she said, “why’d he do this when we were trying so hard to get you out in a hurry?”

“He wasn’t. He was showing off! He’s been looking for a chance to do it ever since he was ashamed because he didn’t help us in the fight.”

“Being ashamed is sort of hard,” Hugh said. “Now he’s got another load to pack. Lads like Ken learn slow.”

Ann thought of this as she ran across the trail. Ken would be at the end of the portage. They’d have to face him day after day while they struggled against the hunger and hardship his folly had brought upon them. But they’d have to work together. She resolved to be tempered.

Ken was sitting on the river bank. Canoe and dripping packsack were beside him. He looked up.

“They’re chasing the paddles,” he said. “I suppose you’re as through with me as they are.”

“I’d have made it if Philip hadn’t yelled,” Ken said. “Looking back put me off. After that I didn’t have a chance to catch the current the way I’d planned.”

“It’s done now. Go ahead and say what’s on your mind.” Ken didn’t hold back. “If we starve, it’ll be my fault.”

He was bitter. Ann didn’t know whether it was bitterness with himself or them. And she didn’t care. Now they must think only of getting out.

Ken stood up and began to undo the straps of the dripping packsack. “Suppose I might as well start making camp,” he said.

Wet tent and blankets had been spread to dry when Jerry and Philip returned with three paddles. No one mentioned the lost grub sack. Philip and Jerry carried the equipment across the portage while Ken made beds and set up tents. Ann apportioned the dry blankets. Ken had avoided meeting Hugh, but when the trapper’s bed was made the four carried Hugh across.

Hugh did not speak of the lost food. Ken was silent, and he did not meet their eyes.

It was late. They were exhausted. Defeat and anger hung like a heavy cloud above them. Philip opened the sack in which they carried cooking dishes and a small store of daily rations. He set the contents on the ground.

They had tea, coffee, a small can of lard, some rice, dried fruit, sugar, soup powder. Fortunately the flour sack had just been filled from the main stores.

It wasn’t much for five hungry people. Ann looked at the serious faces of the others. Even tonight they must go on rations.

“We’ll save the rice, sugar, and soup for Hugh,” Philip decided. “We can divide the tea and coffee to last two weeks. We’ll boil fish from now on. Lucky we have some salt.”

“We can catch our supper tonight,” Jerry said. “Come on, Ken. Three lines will get something.”

Ann prepared Hugh’s supper. When she carried him a bowl of soup, boiled rice and raisins, he frowned.

The three boys returned with a string of wall-eyed pike, enough for supper and breakfast. Jerry suggested they might stay over the next morning and smoke more fish.

“Have to wait until the blankets are dry anyway,” Philip said. “In our next camp on Wabigoon, I’ll go hunting. Maybe get a caribou.”

Planning how to meet their problems brought some cheerfulness and did a little to heal the ugly breach. Philip and Ken would never be friends but now, at least, they spoke to one another. Ann wondered what Philip had said to Ken, and then she was glad she hadn’t heard. Philip might be inarticulate at times, but once the dam broke there was a deluge.

The next morning they were up early. Philip built a smoking rack and Ken and Jerry caught pike in the rapids. By noon the blankets were dry. They loaded the canoes, packing the half-smoked fish in the bows.

When they reached Lake Wabigoon, an afternoon westerly was blowing. The lake was choppy and they had to hug the lee shore. The route was longer, but at least it meant progress. Philip insisted they keep going whenever travel was possible.

So much depended on luck now, Ann thought. Always before, she and Philip had trusted to their ability to meet conditions they knew. Now everything depended on the luck the north country gave them. Food, a safe and quick passage, perhaps even Hugh’s life—it was frightening.

They ate fish again for supper. Already boiled fish had begun to pall. Jerry said they’d be wearing scales when they reached Fox Island. He was making a real effort to be gay. Ann wondered why she’d ever thought him quiet and reserved.

Next morning they awoke to find a wind-lashed lake. In another hour it would be blowing too hard for travel. Philip said it was a good day for hunting. When he went to the tent for his rifle, Hugh protested.

“Country up here is easy to get lost in. It’s swamp and muskeg. One mile looks like every other.”

“I can’t get lost if I keep the lake in sight,” Philip said. “I can hunt along the shore.”

“Then it’s up to me to keep the home fires smoking under the fish,” Ken said.

It was the first gaiety he had attempted since the disaster at the rapids. When the hunters had departed, Ann fed Hugh, dressed his scalp wound, put applications on his ankle, and then went in search of blueberries. She found a patch and returned with a pailful.

She wouldn’t admit the possibility that Philip would not get game, but the boys returned that evening empty handed.

“Usually see the pesky critters when you don’t need ’em,” Hugh said. “But I always did like fish.”

They ate smoked pike that night, for it had been too rough to catch fresh fish. When Ann made tea and was about to put in the precious spoon and a half of tea leaves, Philip stopped her.

Then Ann knew they might not get out even in two weeks. All the food, even Hugh’s, should be rationed. She resolved to talk to the others when Hugh had gone to sleep. But that evening he complained of being lonesome.

They gathered around his bed. It was hard to appear cheerful when she was really frightened, but Ann made a valiant effort. Then Hugh brought up the subject which was in all their minds.

“Thought so,” Hugh said. “Should have made a pan of biscuits. Philip and Jerry needed ’em after a day in the bush.”

“Never need it more than you did tonight,” Hugh said. “Caribou are funny. You might run into a bunch, and again you might go for days without seeing any. But worry is a poor food to feed on when you’re up against tough going.”

“We’ll get out all right if we take it slow and steady,” Hugh went on. “Lots of folks have lived on fish. Once this ankle gets better, I can hobble across portages. It’s tough luck I got to be a drag on you.”

“Hugh knows we couldn’t even find our route without him,” Jerry said. “We’ll get through all right. We were going fine until—”

“Why not admit it?” Ken said. “Then we’d do something about it. We know we can’t go on this way. We’ve got to get help. One or two of us should start ahead and bring back someone from Fox Island.”

He looked around the circle. His manner was so logical that Ann couldn’t believe he was actually proposing to leave Hugh stranded. Didn’t he realize they were working to get a badly injured man to a doctor quickly? She wanted to say so, but she couldn’t. Not with Hugh present.

Philip’s eyes were blazing and Ann feared his self-control would snap. Then Jerry spoke, and he put a new stiffness in his tone.

“Who decided?” Ken asked. “No one asked me what I thought. This concerns us all. It’s time we faced things. I’m willing to put it up to Hugh.” He turned to the old trapper. “Isn’t my plan a good one?”

“Yes, and no.” Hugh said. “If any of you knew the route well enough to make it, I’d say you ought to go and send Dave back for me. Told Ann and Philip that the other morning when—”

“I know you don’t,” Hugh said. “So as it stands, we’d better stick together.”

In the next two days the north conspired to delay them. They fought windy stretches on Lake Wabigoon, going miles out of their way to hug protecting shores. They spent three precious afternoon hours windbound behind a point before they dared make a three mile open crossing.

Beyond Wabigoon came the four portages through the chain of lakes. These had been exasperating on the northern journey when they’d had to make two trips across each. Now, without Hugh to help in the packing, and with the added task of lifting the old trapper in and out of the canoe and carrying him to the next lake, they expended themselves to the limit of endurance. Their determination didn’t weaken, but only courage kept them going.

Philip hunted each morning and evening without success. Always they were delayed by the need of fishing. With their slow progress, they didn’t dare make inroads on the precious store of food. Boiled fish nourished but did not satisfy them. Their talk turned on food. It was in their minds always when they ate the monotonous fare.

Ken said nothing more about sending a messenger ahead to bring aid, but his conviction that it was their only chance colored his comments. He, more than the others, was aware of the delays and more resentful.

Their muscles became weary. Backs and shoulders ached. Exhaustion dragged at them. Nerves were jangled and sometimes tempers were short.

On the last portage of the series they loaded the canoes only to discover that a pack of blankets had been forgotten at the take-off. No one knew whose fault it was.

“Why don’t you blame me?” Ken snarled. “I’m supposed to be responsible for all the grief around here.”

Even when the four portages were behind them, they felt no relief. They were approaching the mile and a half portage they so dreaded.

Ken had spoken of it often, and always gloomily. Philip said they should plan to tackle it early in the morning when they were fresh.

“Ever figure how long it’s going to take us to make four trips across a mile and a half?” Ken asked.

More than ten miles, Ann thought, and six of those miles they must carry a load. They had talked of it so much it had become a mental hazard.

They camped beside a narrows within a mile of the portage. Now their camp sites were determined by fishing possibilities, and wall-eyed pike liked fast water.

He looked determined, stubborn, Ann thought. She sat down with the others and waited for him to begin.

“Hugh’s ankle isn’t getting any better,” Ken said. “He knows as well as we do he won’t hobble across any portages this summer. Philip hasn’t shot any game.”

“That we’re wasting time. Every day we lose is making our chances slimmer. Someone’s got to go ahead, travel light and bring in help. We know the route. We came up here. I could find the way back.”

Ken flared. “And whose fault was that? You yelled at me just before I hit the rock. I’m tired of being blamed for everything that goes wrong.”

“The rapids haven’t anything to do with the question of our splitting up,” Jerry said. “We can’t spare a canoe. And it takes four to carry Hugh.”

“But we’re not getting anywhere,” Ken insisted. “Once we get help we can have him out in a hurry.”

“And you expect Hugh to take the chance that you’d get help in time to get him to the doctor?” Ann asked.

“But it isn’t!” Ann cried. “And you know it! Hugh told you what he thought the night you asked him. He knows this country. And he knows you, and how much he could depend on you ever getting out.”

“Hugh thinks he’s the only one who knows anything.” Ken’s face darkened with anger. “I’m trying to talk sense. It’s crazy staying up here to starve without doing something about it.”

“But we are doing something!” Ann cried. “And every day we’re getting Hugh nearer to Far Lake. That’s what we think about. That is—everyone except you.”

“And we’re not going to cut his chances by giving you a canoe,” Philip added.

“All right,” he said. “When we’re down to our last fish, and getting hungry, don’t blame me. I’ve done all I can.”

“Now he knows how we feel about it,” Jerry said. “We won’t hear any more about that plan.”

The next morning Ann dreaded meeting Ken at breakfast. It had been hard enough when they had maintained a semblance of good fellowship. Now, after their open quarrel, Ken would be furious. But he surprised her with his cheerfulness. He’d been up early, caught three fish, and had the fire lighted. As they cooked breakfast together they were almost companionable.

“How about frying the fish this morning?” Ken asked. “A little grease would stick to our ribs on the long portage.”

Ann brought out their precious lard, and she used more coffee than the prescribed daily ration. It seemed justifiable as a preparation for the rigors of the day.

They were in the canoes early. When they reached the portage, Ken picked up the heavier canoe.

“Ken’s ashamed of last night,” Ann said. “He’s trying to make up for it by doing something nice.”

Ken was so changeable and unpredictable, she thought. It was hard to make up one’s mind about him.

When they passed Ken on the portage, he was resting. But he said his knees were holding out. He was almost across when they started back for their second loads.

They felt better now that the two canoes were across. Later Ann was surprised at the speed with which the packs were transported. There was no need for her to make a third trip. Ken piled his load high with everything Philip and Jerry had left.

The portage hadn’t been nearly as bad as their dread had made it appear. They’d have Hugh at the other end before the noon meal.

“Ken’ll be here soon,” Philip said. “He was resting his pack on the last quarter mile when we started back.”

“Sit down and draw your breath,” Hugh said. “You got your biggest job ahead, packing a wuthless critter like me. I’d give anything to hobble.”

But everyone was glad to rest. They lay stretched out in the sun. After some time Jerry sat up.

“Should have been here by now,” Philip said. “I’ll go down the trail and take a look.”

Ann settled back. The moss was soft. The sun was warm. The soft rustle of poplar leaves as they twirled in the summer breeze was soothing. She lay there, drowsy, half asleep, listening to the drone of Hugh’s and Jerry’s voices. It was a long time later when she opened her eyes.

“He’s had near enough time to get clean across and back,” Hugh said, and his voice was worried.

Ann thought their noon meal would be late. She wouldn’t have time to make those biscuits.

Philip came down the trail swiftly, a packsack on his back, and carrying an ax. Ann wondered. It was the packsack which contained food and dishes. When she’d seen it last, it had been at the end of the portage.

“I never liked him from the first!” he stormed. “I never trusted him. I should have known he’d run out on us.”

The note was short, so short it didn’t require the long time each spent looking at the page torn from Ken’s notebook. Ann tried to make the words have meaning.

“And he planned it,” Philip stormed. “That’s why he packed the grub sack this morning. He carried the big canoe across so he’d be at the other end after we’d started back. That gave him a full hour.”

“I don’t think that was the only reason,” Ann said. She looked at Jerry, feeling sorry for him.

“At school one of the fellows accused Ken of cheating,” he said. “We didn’t believe it—then.” His tone was flat.

“A rifle, fishing tackle, blankets, ax, his clothes, and a packsack,” Philip answered. “In his hurry he left our grub sack open. He took some tea, sugar, rice, and flour.”

“ ’Fraid it’s a surer thing than hoping,” Hugh said. “This country looks awful different when a fellow is back-tracking. But it’s too late to stop him now.”

Philip gathered wood to make a fire. His ax strokes were vicious. Ann sat down beside Jerry.

“It isn’t that,” Jerry replied. “But if I hadn’t invited him up here he wouldn’t have had the chance to do this to you people—and to Hugh.”

“Surest thing you know,” and Jerry smiled. “Only it’ll take a little longer.”

“Ann said she’d make biscuits,” Hugh said. “They’d taste mighty good right now.”

Ann wondered how Hugh could even talk of biscuits, but she was looking forward to them by the time she’d baked a panful. They had three each, one more than the ration. Philip said the extra biscuit was Ken’s share, divided among them. They topped off the meal with a dessert. Philip counted out six raisins apiece and added Ken’s half dozen. They boiled the dried fruit in a large quantity of water.

“He thinks my head’s the heaviest,” Hugh said. “But that don’t make good sense.”

It was a feeble attempt at a joke, but they needed any joke as they started off. Four bearers on a litter had been slow. Now they seemed to travel at a snail’s pace. Ann thought her arms were slipping out of their sockets when Hugh called for the first stop.

Hugh chuckled. “Ken said all a fellow had to do was keep his wits,” he said. “He figured how to miss packing me across the longest portage.”

Ann found Ken’s desertion on that particular portage the hardest to forgive. He wasn’t sure the other three could carry Hugh a mile and a half, and hadn’t cared. But they’d carry Hugh. They’d show Ken! That spirit drove her the last steps before their second stop for breath.

“A half mile to go,” Hugh said. He searched their faces. “Can you tough it out?”

“Thank ye, lad, for putting it that way,” Hugh said. “But I know it ain’t easy.”

Hard as the portage was for them, it was harder on the independent spirit of the old trapper. Ann hoped he didn’t know how near exhaustion she was on the third half mile. She was afraid he heard her labored breathing and was sure air whistled into her lungs when at last they set Hugh down at the end of the portage.

If they could make that one, they could make the others. Ken had not stopped them. He’d done his worst. He’d delayed them, but they’d win out despite him. It had become a battle, not only against the north but against treachery and faithlessness. How, she wondered, could Ken be such a coward. Hugh deserved all the loyalty, all the devotion, they could give.

Her anger had spent itself when they were ready to go on. Now all the duffle, and all four of them, must travel in one canoe. Philip said they could abandon some of their possessions.

“What?” Hugh asked. “We got to have two tents. No telling what might happen, or whether we might need ’em.”

“We need four blankets,” Jerry said. “I haven’t any extra clothes. I could throw away the cameras.”

In the end they abandoned nothing. They stowed the blankets which Ken had scattered on the ground and started on. The canoe had three scant inches of freeboard. Philip paddled in the stern, Jerry in the bow, and Ann crouched behind Hugh.

The heavily laden canoe would necessitate a longer route. They could no longer strike boldly across a rough passage but must take a more cautious course. Caution, Ann knew, as they crept along protecting shores, had made them timid.

In the afternoon rain began to fall. It had rained on their northern journey, but those showers had been soft, almost kindly, blurring the distant shores and making the north a place of mystery. These rain drops fell hard and fast with decision, and promised more to come.

In camp that evening rain fell harder. Drops hissed in the fire and beat a tattoo on the canvas. They staked out the door of the big tent and carried the boiled fish under shelter. As they sat around the kettle they felt a coziness in their temporary home. Warmth and the odor of wet wool blended.

“A wet camp ain’t so bad,” Hugh said. “It’s knowing how to take it.”

Not even rain could make Philip forego his evening hunt. They couldn’t afford to miss a chance to get caribou. While Philip was away, Jerry and Ann washed the dishes and put the camp in order. Jerry carried in a great pile of firewood.

Ann sat in the tent and talked to Hugh. She thought his chest didn’t pain him quite so badly. Breathing didn’t make him wince. But he was capable of pretending or he too might have felt a vast relief now that the long portage was behind them.

Philip returned at dusk. He had followed the shore without seeing a sign of game.

“Maybe when we hit the smaller lakes you’ll find ’em,” Hugh said. “But I always did like fish.”

That remark had become a bid for laughter, and laughter came easily now. They should have been downhearted, even frightened, but Ken’s desertion had brought a sense of strength and confidence. Discord was gone. Ken’s fear no longer broke their tight small circle. Now four courageous people faced the north together.

Ann fell asleep to the sound of rain beating on the canvas. In the night gusts shook the tent. In the morning rain no longer fell in drops. It descended in long slim pencils.

Ann ran through the downpour to the large tent where the others waited breakfast. When Jerry brought the pail of hot coffee, he said he hadn’t had to go to the lake for water.

“We won’t have one today,” Jerry said. “Unless—” and he looked at Hugh.

Ann had doubted if the old trapper could stand a day’s exposure. The others would be working, could keep warm, but he must lie, helpless and drenched.

In the canoe they covered Hugh with the small tent, although he said he’d rather drown than smother. Ann often stopped paddling to bail the craft. Jerry and Philip hunched their shoulders and swung their paddles, hour after hour.

They traveled in a world of vast confusion. The noise of the rain was not a patter but the sound of onslaught. Each drop striking the lake formed a tiny geyser and the whole surface was pockmarked with them.

Ann had dreaded the two portages ahead of them that day. On the first, Philip came as near to complaining as he had on the whole trip, when they waded ashore through slippery mud.

Both portages were misery for Hugh and for his bearers. Trails were soft. Shoepacks slipped in mud. Despite their care, the litter lurched and jolted, and Hugh lay in the driving downpour, unprotected.

When they staggered across the second, Ann said that if it rained the next day, they couldn’t travel.

“Hugh can’t stand this,” she said. “He’s wet and cold and terribly shaken.”

Jerry studied Hugh’s face when they lifted him into the canoe. Hugh was grinning.

“We’re lucky,” he said. “This wind is going to clean the rain out. Chances are we’ll be dry when we hit camp.”

Ann thought Hugh’s mind had been affected by the hardship, but in late afternoon the promised miracle occurred. The rain ceased as suddenly as though a faucet had been turned.

“They ran out of water,” Jerry said. “I could have warned them they were using it too fast.”

The sun came out. They trailed a fishline and caught four fish. That evening they camped in a clean washed world. The freshness was intoxicating.

Philip investigated the low murmur of a waterfall and reported that a stream fell over a steep bank.

The sun was sinking as they crossed a low ridge. The stream was lined with poplar. At any other time Ann would have been captured by its beauty, but tonight her mind was wholly on caribou.

They walked quietly. Ann remembered with relief that there wasn’t a dry twig to snap. She’d never learned to be as silent a stalker as was Philip. His body seemed to flow.

They followed the stream a half mile to a small lake that lay in the center of a marsh. Philip turned to the right, followed the edge of the basin, where spruce grew thickly. He found a rock which commanded the grass-lined shores and they sat down to wait.

Waiting had always been hard for Ann. Now, as she watched the surrounding forest for the slightest movement, she was so tense her muscles ached. The minutes dragged. She tried to follow Philip’s example. He relaxed and let his eyes sweep the landscape. He always saw more.

Ann’s glance followed his. A head and antlers had emerged from the thick brush across the lake. Then Ann saw a tawny body.

One caribou after another came out of the forest. They came by twos, by threes, in groups. Ann counted fourteen. Hugh had said they’d come in a herd.

A great bull led them. He walked toward the lake, stopping often to sniff, to listen. Philip sat motionless, his rifle in his hands. The bull reached the water. He looked around until, reassured at last, he put his head down to drink.

That inert heap was no longer a caribou. It was food! Food for Hugh! Food for them! Suddenly Ann realized how hungry she had been.

Philip started to run. Already the herd had fled. Swimming across the lake, splashing through the shallows, the caribou reached the protecting forest and disappeared.

Ann ran beside Philip. They stood over the dead bull. Ann wanted to dance, to sing, to offer thanks to the north for its gift. Food to make them strong! Food to give them courage!

As she started toward camp she was glad of a chance for action. Sudden release from the fear of hunger demanded an outlet and she ran. When brush barred her passage she pushed it aside without being aware she had done so. She reached camp breathless.

Ann led Jerry to the caribou. When Philip saw the ax in Jerry’s hand, he grinned.

Jerry made no pretense at calmness. He was as ecstatic as Ann. The bull was a large one. Its great antlers had only recently lost their velvet. Ragged patches still clung to the long branches.

Ann left them dressing the caribou. She knew Hugh would be eager to hear details.

“Have a cooking fire and hot skillet ready,” Philip called as she started off. “We’ll bring the liver.”

It was dark when the boys returned to camp, bringing the haunches, liver, and tongue. They would pack in the meat next day. Ann cooked the liver and they ate before the campfire. Philip filled his plate three times. Ann couldn’t remember any food being so sweet and tender. The tongue, boiling for breakfast, sent out enticing odors.

“What a difference meat makes!” Jerry said as he stretched out before the fire.

Even Hugh looked better. His eyes were brighter. He held out his empty plate to Ann and sighed.

They spent a day caring for the meat, cutting it into thin strips and smoking it. Ann had seen racks hung with meat in Indian villages and thought how unappetizing it had been. Now the thin, blackening strips were like untold wealth. Not a pound was wasted. Ann rendered every ounce of fat.

They ate prodigiously. Philip said now they could go farther, travel longer hours. He made a calendar to mark off the days.

“If we get Hugh to Far Lake by Treaty Day, we’ll save time in getting him to a doctor,” he said.

It was the first time since Ken’s desertion that Philip admitted they might reach home by the middle of August.

The next morning when they carried Hugh to the canoe they showed him nearly one hundred pounds of smoked meat in the packsacks.

“What do you do when she gets smart like that?” he said. “Hit her with a paddle?”

Jokes came easily now, though they knew hardships lay ahead. They still faced long hard days of toil. They faced delays. They must avoid big stretches and thus paddle many extra hours to skirt the shorelines of deep bays. Ken’s desertion had forced this upon them, but that morning no one spoke of Ken. No one wondered what had happened to him.

It wasn’t until afternoon, when they reached their first portage of the day, that they encountered traces of him. Philip was the first to see Ken’s footprints. They were clear cut and deep.

From then on they watched for Ken’s footprints. Philip took delight in piecing evidence together. He searched for Ken’s campfires and tried to estimate how much time had elapsed since they had been lighted.

“He’s losing time,” Philip said. “Bet he got off the route in that tricky place with all those arms and bays. How’s he going to feel if we catch up with him?”

“We’d have made the wrong turn too if we hadn’t had Hugh with us,” Jerry said.

None of them missed an opportunity to assure Hugh of their need of him, for as the days passed and they struggled on, grim and determined, Hugh grew more and more mortified by his helplessness. He resented each portage, when the three plodded across with their heavy burdens. He asked so often for crutches that finally Ann said they must let him have a pair.

“Those ribs have only started to heal,” Jerry said. “He’ll snap them again.”

“He hates so to have us carry him,” Ann said, “he’ll never be satisfied till he’s tried it.”

“Why can’t I walk on ’em?” he demanded. “You folks can’t stand this heavy packing. Getting so thin it takes two of you to make a shadow.”

Ann was thinner. Her breeches hung on her. Jerry was gaunt, and Philip had worn himself to a mere bundle of determination and energy. But zeal burned in his eyes.

They gave in. After supper that evening, Philip went down the shore to a stand of young birch. He had to search quite a while for saplings with the proper blunt forks for the top of a crutch and that still had a stout branch in the proper place for a handle. When he brought them to camp he trimmed them with a knife and measured them to Jerry, who was only a little taller than Hugh.

Ann contributed a woolen shirt and they cut it into strips and wound it over thick dried caribou moss so that the crutches would be soft and round under Hugh’s armpits.

Ann, watching as the two boys lifted Hugh to his feet, knew at once the experiment had failed. Hugh gritted his teeth. His lips were white, and white showed through his deep tan. Most of all, defeat showed in his eyes. He knew even before he had tried that he couldn’t stand the pain.

But he tried. He adjusted the crutches beneath his arms, and between tight lips he spoke of how well they fitted. But when he tried to take a step his face became whiter, his lips tighter, his eyes dark with pain. The swollen ankle, swinging, was bad enough, but when he tried to take a step his chest was wrenched and a spasm of pain seized him.

The crutches had accomplished nothing except to add to Hugh’s depression. They had even set him back physically and next morning he showed the effects of a night of pain. All day he dozed in the canoe.

Philip had the map before him that day and followed it without consulting Hugh. He had no trouble. Points and islands were familiar, especially if he turned to examine them when they had passed. Then they looked as they had on their way north.

In the afternoon they passed through a maze of islands and turned into a long arm. After they had paddled several miles, Jerry stopped.

For a few moments they consulted in whispers, then decided to waken Hugh. He lifted his head and told them to turn the canoe around.

“That white granite boulder with the dead spruce across it,” he said at last. “It was on our right when we went north.”

“And I left it on the right when we came south,” Philip said. “I’m just dumb.”

“You’re smarter’n a lot o’ men I been in the bush with,” Hugh said. “I been lost plenty o’ times. This small scale map you got to work with would fool the man who drew it.”

“But we lost two hours,” Philip said as he turned the canoe to the right course.

They were precious hours, and in the days that followed they watched the route carefully. Hours were too valuable as they spent their energies to the utmost from dawn till dark.

Philip checked his calendar each evening, but the marks he made on it meant so little. Their thoughts were on the days ahead, on the obstacles in their route, swift rivers, portages. In those slow dragging days, wind held them shorebound. Current mocked their weary paddles. And always they had portages.

But one day they saw victory. They knew at last they were winning. Lakes, rivers, and portages fell behind them until one night Hugh looked at the map.

Ann thought years had passed since they’d paddled north on the windy stretch of Spider Lake. And beyond it was Caribou, and then Far Lake, the end.

He looked at Ann and Philip. The three shared a warm glow of triumph. They had done this job together.

In the afternoon they reached the portage leading into Spider Lake. Ann, remembering the steep hill, was glad they wouldn’t have to climb it, but she discovered that, with a burden, going down hill was harder than going up. On their return for second loads, Philip asked if anyone had seen Ken’s tracks.

“He got lost in Dogtooth,” Hugh said, and after a moment he added, “Nothing we can do about it.”

“You folks are in no shape to hunt him,” Hugh said, and he seemed to be arguing with himself.

Philip picked up a packsack and started over the portage. Ann stood for a moment looking across Dogtooth Lake. Somewhere in that vast confusion of spruce-lined shores, points, and deep indentations, Ken was struggling to find his way. Jerry stood beside her.

They were exhausted, and now they had to fall back on reserves of strength to get Hugh across the portage, down that steep hill. It wasn’t so bad at first, but when they reached a place where the trail dipped over ledges, Jerry’s shoepacks slipped on a wet rock. Ann thought surely Hugh would slide off the stretcher. She was sobbing from the strain when at last he was safe at the bottom.

But they had finished one problem only to face another. Spider Lake lay before them, and there could be no hugging the shore to evade the big open stretch. That would take a week, and they didn’t have a day to spare. Now, with a scant three inches of freeboard, they must risk the wind.

The wind blew, but not too hard. Only once did a wave slop over the gunnel. Their shoulders ached and their toughened hands were sore when at last they were safe.

Now they were almost in home country. Two more lakes and three portages lay between them and Lake Caribou. And after that they had only the one portage in the river before reaching Far Lake.

Nothing could stop them now. They’d make Far Lake by Treaty Day. Philip, driving, eager, wanted to cross one more portage that evening.

“Camp on this take-off, lad,” Hugh said. “Portage’ll seem half as long tomorrow morning.”

“Hugh’s right,” Jerry said. “I don’t want to tackle that canoe tonight.”

“And I’m going to make a bannock,” Ann said. “We can afford the flour, now that we’re so nearly home.”

It wouldn’t match Hugh’s bannocks. They had no lard, only caribou fat for shortening, but it would be hot and brown, and it would be like a birthday cake, a celebration. Ann was about to turn the bannock when she heard a shout.

Ann never knew who turned the bannock, or even if it was turned. Neither did she know who told the story of those sixteen days. Questions and answers came too fast. There was so much to tell and to explain—one canoe, lack of food, Hugh’s injury, and Ken’s absence. The last was the most difficult of all. Jerry said Ken had gone ahead to get help.

“We saw his tracks as far as Dogtooth,” Hugh said. “We were in no shape to hunt him. And—” he stopped.

“How’d you happen to send him ahead?” Dave Jackman asked. “He doesn’t know the country.”

“Gosh, Dad!” Philip said. “We can talk about Ken later. We’re trying to tell about our trip.”

But the story was interrupted many times. John Sloane had to know how many days they had lived on the country, where they got the caribou, and who shot it. Dave Jackman had to be told how many trips they made across portages and how long it took for three to carry Hugh a mile and a half.

The story was finished at last. Dave Jackman’s eyes glowed with pride. He looked at the lawyer.

“Kids!” Hugh snorted. “If you know three better men in the bush, name ’em.”

And he did, making a ceremony of it. He faced Jerry last. As father and son clasped hands, looking straight into each other’s eyes, Ann knew words were unnecessary. Jerry flushed. The lawyer was beaming. But Hugh wasn’t satisfied.

“You can stop talking about the Albany, John,” he said. “Your trip was a picnic alongside Jerry’s.”

They’d not begun to catch up on details when Dave Jackman opened the grubsack and asked what they wanted for supper.

It was a gala meal. They carried Hugh from the tent and arranged a place for him to lie so he wouldn’t miss the talk.

“After supper I’ll take a look at that ankle,” John Sloane said. “I know just enough first aid to be a menace.”

“Nothing wrong with the doctorin’ I’ve had,” Hugh boasted. “But I would like to know what keeps the blamed thing sore.”

Hugh refused to admit they had been rescued. He said the few remaining portages were nothing compared to those behind them. But he admitted that he’d been expecting the arrival of Dave Jackman.

“Nobody said anything,” he told Dave. “But there was times when we all hoped you’d come. What kept you?”

“I allowed you a few days for weather,” Dave Jackman said. “Then I waited for John, who was on his way from Chicago. And I went to the Post to tell Gillespie to have the railroad watched for any suspicious men coming out of the bush.”

“Thought you might have run into them,” his father said. “But I’m afraid we started on their trail too late.”

“Maybe not,” Hugh said. “They started out the other way. That’s longer. And Sweeny can’t paddle, thanks to Philip. Probably Shorty couldn’t have paddled either if he hadn’t give up when Jerry got a rifle.”

They’d already described the fight, but Hugh intended to make sure they hadn’t missed a detail.

“Suppose you folks spill it,” Dave Jackman said. “It was Ken who lost the grubsack in the rapids?”

He told Ken’s story. It wasn’t as passionate a version as Philip’s would have been, but it was fair and direct. John Sloane’s face grew grim.

“How about it, Dave?” he said. “After these folks worked their hearts out getting Hugh this far, we’re not going to hold them up while we hunt Ken.”

“Our job is Hugh, and them,” Dave said. “Gillespie can send some Indians to hunt Ken.”

“If the motor boat he’s been expecting gets here, he can load up a crew, take them and their canoes as far as the rapids on the river. After that, it’s anybody’s guess how long it’ll take to find him.”

“It’s the best we can do,” the lawyer said. “I feel badly about misjudging that boy.” He seemed to blame himself for Ken. “I should have—”

“Thought you was the fellow who was talking about the bush being a proving ground,” Hugh jeered.

“I still believe it is,” the lawyer said, and he looked at Jerry. “The bush proved one thing to me I won’t forget.”

Before supper, John Sloane looked at Hugh’s injuries. He tried to make light of them and told Hugh he was too tough to break and was made of rawhide. But he was serious when he joined the others.

“I’m glad Hugh’s getting to a doctor,” he said. “That sprain’s a bad one. Ligaments must be torn, it’s so badly swollen. It’s a good thing for him you didn’t let him step on it. No telling what he’d have let himself in for.”

“Of course we wouldn’t let Hugh walk,” Ann said. “He wasn’t so terribly heavy. Really!”

“If I ever crack up, all I hope is that I have someone like you to take care of me,” he said. “Hugh was lucky.”

Three tents facing the big campfire had a festive air against the dark forest. Everyone was tired but no one wanted to break up the party. Hugh refused to go to bed before the others.

“Glad she did,” Hugh said. “Gives me a chance to tell all over again what these three did.”

“I’m sorry that she’s still worried,” John Sloane said. “We’ve had our good news, but she’s still waiting.”

“If we start early we ought to reach the river by tomorrow night,” Dave Jackman said. “Then we’ll be home by the next afternoon.”

At sunrise next morning Dave Jackman was cooking breakfast, and a big breakfast. It seemed good to have someone to take charge of camp work.

“You’re to be a lady of leisure from now on,” John Sloane told Ann as he handed her a plate of bacon and griddle cakes topped off with syrup.

“I’d forgot there was food like this,” he said, as he passed his plate for a second helping.

Dave Jackman laughed. “Hardest job we’ve got on this trip, John, is to fill up this gang.”

Hugh grinned when the two men picked up his litter to carry it across the portage.

He seemed sorry that there weren’t more portages. When they struck a head wind on Caribou Lake that afternoon, Hugh was overjoyed.

Philip and his father paddled Hugh. Jerry, Ann, and John Sloane were in the other canoe.

“No one ever forgets the bush or what he’s learned there,” John Sloane said.

Ann was beginning to believe that. Her father had said that nothing she and Philip had learned in the north would hold them back. Perhaps this was the trouble with Ken. He’d never learned to work hard for something he wanted.

“How about it?” Dave Jackman asked. “Can you folks stand another hour so we can camp at the mouth of the river?”

“Yes,” Ann said, and she was thinking of her mother on Fox Island, watching the lake.

Next morning they were awake early. Dave Jackman apologized for the sunrise breakfast.

“Rescue!” Hugh snorted. “This ain’t no rescue. They’d toughed it out already.”

Hugh’s old woods phrases had begun to have real meaning for Ann, but it was a relief to know they would not have to carry Hugh around the rapids in the river.

They reached the portage in early morning and found a recently abandoned camp, evidently that of several Indian families. Three flattened patches in the grass beside the rocky trail told that. Ashes of campfires were still warm.

“Indians,” Dave Jackman said. “On their way to the Post for Treaty Day.”

“Didn’t think there were that many nitchies left in the bush this summer,” Hugh said.

They set in their canoes and started on. A mile farther they saw a birchbark disappearing around the turn ahead.

“Chance for us to send a message to Gillespie,” Dave Jackman said. “We can catch them before they leave the river.”

Their paddles quickened. In a long straight stretch they could overtake the slower birchbarks. They made the turn. Ahead were three canoes. Ann gasped.

Dave Jackman shouted and the three canoes waited in a cluster until they were overtaken.

“Shag-e-nash, shag-e-nash!” the Indians said. It was their word for white man. They seemed to think Ken had not recognized his own people.

Ken did not speak. He sat slumped in his canoe. He was thin, hollow-eyed, disheveled. This was a different Ken than Ann had known.

“Picked Ken up on a small lake east of Dogtooth,” he said. “They came down a river which empties into Caribou. All they could understand was that he wanted the white trader.”

“I remembered their name for the post manager,” Ken said. “I knew if they got me to Far Lake, I could find Fox Island. I was going to send help back.”

“Make it ten dollars,” Dave Jackman said to Ken. “They say you’ve been with them three days.”

Ken gave the money to the leader. It was accepted with me-quetches. Their beaming faces indicated that they considered the whole affair to have ended happily. They prepared to paddle on.

Ann wondered who would paddle with Ken. There was an awkward pause. Then John Sloane stood up.

Jerry and Ann fell in behind them. Ann resented Ken’s presence. It would spoil the jubilance of their home-coming. Ken, lost and in danger, was at least an object of their pity.

“That was a lot better than having to send a search party,” Jerry said. “I wouldn’t want to be in Ken’s place.”

“I wouldn’t either,” Ann said soberly. “If I was Ken, I’d rather not be found.”

They did not stop that noon. Tired and hungry as they were, they swept up the long stretch to Fox Island. Shouting and waving paddles, they drew near and saw a slight figure dash from the house and run to the landing. Mrs. Jackman was waiting as the three canoes drew up.

“You’re safe!” she cried. “My dears, you’re safe!” and then she saw Hugh. “What happened?”

All talked at once. Mrs. Jackman kissed Ann and Philip and then Ken and Jerry. She kissed Hugh and demanded an explanation of his injuries.

“It’s a long story, Mary,” Dave Jackman said. “Let’s get him to bed first.”

They carried Hugh to his cabin and made him comfortable. Ann and her mother went to the kitchen to prepare food. Ann told some of the details while they made tea, filled platters with cookies, doughnuts, bread, and meat. She didn’t mention Ken.

“Come on, everyone,” she said. “You must be starved. Ann said you didn’t stop to eat this noon.”

They all trooped to Hugh’s cabin. John Sloane walked with Ken. Ann wondered how Hugh could tell that story with Ken present.

“Don’t begin, Hugh, until I’ve poured tea,” Mrs. Jackman said as they found chairs and stools in Hugh’s small room. “I don’t want to do anything but listen.”

“I ran out when I got scared,” he said. “I talked about how someone ought to bring in help. But I knew, and you people knew, that wasn’t my real reason. I didn’t know how Ann and Philip and Jerry were going to get Hugh out. I was too scared to care.”

He stopped and gulped. This was dreadful, Ann thought. It was harder even than thinking Ken was a coward. Someone must say something.

“I haven’t finished,” Ken said. “You folks are through with me. I don’t blame you. But I wanted to tell you that I knew what I had—”

A moment later he returned with the Scotch manager, whose manner was more excited than usual. His deep voice filled the cabin.

“First time I run out here in my new motor boat, making enough noise to wake the dead, no one even meets me at the landing,” he said. “Dave says the claim jumpers were bad business.”

“We caught that pair,” Mr. Gillespie said. “They tried to get aboard a train at Moose Landing. Provincial police will bring them to the Post so you can identify them. That’s what I ran out to tell you.”

“We’ll all go,” his father said. “We’ll take Hugh to see the doctor. When do you expect him?”

“Day after tomorrow,” Mr. Gillespie replied. “I’ll bring the doctor out. What’s the use of a new motor boat if you don’t use it?”

Ann thought that at last Hugh would have a chance to tell his story, but Mr. Gillespie was in a hurry. He refused even tea and cake.

“I want to hear all about that trip when I come out with Dr. Allen,” he said. “Now I’ve got to get back. Hunters are coming in for Treaty. Shouldn’t have left the Post at all.”

“Don’t try to walk down to meet us when I bring the doctor,” he said. “You’re tough, but I’ll tell him there’s a sick man out here. It’s my excuse to have a real visit at Fox Island.”

“Could you take me to the Post, sir?” he asked. “I’ve got to catch a train.”

John Sloane started to protest, then stopped. He put his hand on Ken’s shoulder.

They helped him get his baggage and walked to the landing with him. The new motor boat was admired. Then almost before they realized it, Mr. Gillespie was in the boat and the Indian boatman was waiting for the signal to start the motor. Ken started to get in.

She put out her hand. Ken took it eagerly. Then Philip and Jerry shook hands with him.

“You’re a remarkable woman, Mary Jackman,” John Sloane said. “You’ve not heard the details. Yet you said to Ken exactly what we all wanted to say.”

“If all these comings and goings have stopped,” Hugh said, “I’d like to tell the Missus about what them three did.”

“That’s all,” he said at last. “But I wanted you to know how they toughed it out.”

“I’d have known it if you hadn’t told me,” Mrs. Jackman said. “What was it you said one evening, Dave, about the inside being sound? John, you and Dave and I should be very proud.”

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Because of copyright considerations, the illustrations by Harvé Stein (1904-1996) have been omitted from this etext.

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