Law of the North (Originally published as Empery) A Story of Love and Battle in Rupert's Land

A prayer on his lips, Brochet scrambled down the ladder. A curse on his, Black Ferguson tumbled after. In the impetus of his descent the Nor'wester hit the trapdoor over the lad...

Shackled with cold, iron fetters that chilled the earth to its marrow, the mighty northland lay desolate beneath the brief sunshine, fantastic under the auroras. Past Fort Brond...

Brochet arranged it. The chief trader could not trust himself to look upon Desirée's departure with the York Factory packet. The Brondel people cheered its going, but Dunvegan w...

Like a colossal casting in bronze Fort La Roche loomed against the bloody sunset. Brochet glimpsed it for the first time with a prescience of impending evil. Couchant on the ser...

Through the blinding smother of great, soft-falling snowflakes he had heard rather than seen the advance of a dog train toiling up the rising ground upon which the post was situ...

The chief took the indicated place in Dunvegan's canoe with Flora and her boy. These sat amidships. Wahbiscaw was in his place as bowsman. Bruce himself occupied the stern. At a...

A deeper blot within the shadow which the headland cast upon the water, Dunvegan's craft silently rounded Caribou Point, beached softly upon the sand in the granite-walled cove,...

The Cree bucks came slowly up the point, forming a sort of respectful retinue to Running Wolf, his son, Three Feathers, and others of the head men whose dignity of tribal status...

The mass bell's solemn chime pealed forth from the squat tower of the Mission House, echoed against a thousand different rock peaks of the shoreline and rolled resonantly over O...

Mechanically Dunvegan counted the dog teams that crossed the valley before his gaze. Five great sleds he made out, sleds piled high with huge bales of furs. Two men accompanied...

Lieges of the most gigantic trust the world would ever see, the Hudson's Bay men filled Dunvegan's trading room when the long northern twilight fell upon the post. From above th...

Pluff! Pluff! The crunching of Maskwa's snowshoes sounded back through the bitter starlight of the dawn. Taking advantage with his skilful heel-spring of the resilience of the t...

Dunvegan lifted the flap of the Cree wigwam and knew that the third of his missions was ended. Within the primitive tepee on a pile of rabbit-skin blankets sat Flora Macleod, th...

Immediately the Oxford House men re-established the camp to suit their own requirements. Then they devoted themselves to a long-delayed supper till their ravenous appetites were...

The chief trader stared and frowned. The two figures strolling over the path, Edwin Glyndon to his morning's business as clerk and Desirée Lazard for small purchases which were...

A fork of fire leaped up under the quick hands of the Indians. The dead spruce boughs crackled merrily. Baptiste Verenne lay back on a pile of green branches before the flames a...

As a man who gets a knife blade in the ribs Dunvegan settled back in his chair. In spite of his tremendous self control, the pallor crept up through his tan. His eyes widened an...

Off Caribou Point Wahbiscaw, the bowsman of Dunvegan's canoe, cried out sharply in his native tongue. The craft turned aside from a jagged reef of rock that poked like a pike's...

Before Basil Dreaulond, the Hudson's Bay Company's courier, had won half the mile-long Nisgowan portage, the familiar noise of men toiling in pack-harness reached his ears. He s...

As an auspicious omen on Kamattawa Indian summer came down with its fragrant sigh and its transient flash of yellow radiance. Then the winds fell strangely mute. Some unseen mag...

Bargaining ceased. Trade slipped from the men's minds. Donald Muir jumped up and squinted through the open doorway, distinguishing nothing in the swishing cloud-rifts of snow. H...

"An hour ago that countersign would have let you in," he observed. "Now it is of no use whatever for the post is in possession of the Hudson's Bay Company."

"Wait a moment, Desirée," he begged. "I want you to promise me something. I'll have no peace till you do. Macleod has ordered me to build at once the new post on the site I sele...