Dick Herron whipped the grasses with a switch he had broken in passing a
willow-bush. His mind was little active. Chiefly he regretted the good
time he had promised himself here at the Post after the labour of an
early spring march from distant Winnipeg. He appreciated the
difficulties of the undertaking, but idly, as something that hardly
concerned him. The details, the planning, he dismissed from his mind,
confident that his comrade would rise to that. In time Sam Bolton would
show him the point at which he was to bend his strength. Then he would
stoop his shoulders, shut his eyes, and apply the magnificent brute
force and pluck that was in him. So now he puckered his lips to the
sibilance of a canoe-song, and waited.

But the other, Sam Bolton, the veteran woodsman, stood in rapt
contemplation, his wide-seeing, gentle eyes of the old man staring with
the magnitude of his revery.

Beyond the black velvet band lay the wilderness. There was the trackless
country, large as the United States itself, with its great forests, its
unmapped bodies of water, its plains, its barren grounds, its mountains,
its water courses wider even than the Hudson River. Moose and bear, true
lords of the forest, he might see any summer day. Herds of caribou,
sometimes thousands strong, roamed its woodlands and barrens. Wolves,
lurking or bold as their prey was strong or weak, clung to the caribou
bands in hope of a victim. Wolverines,--unchanged in form from another
geological period--marten, mink, fisher, otter, ermine, muskrat, lynx,
foxes, beaver carried on their varied affairs of murder or of peaceful
industry. Woods Indians, scarcely less keen of sense or natural of life
than the animals, dwelt in their wigwams of bark or skins, trapped and
fished, made their long migrations as the geese turn following their
instinct. Sun, shadow, rain, cold, snow, hunger, plenty, labour, or the