The Honor of the Big Snows

On the first snow came young Dixon from Fort Churchill. Jean de Gravois met him on the trail near Ledoq's. When the Englishman recognized the little Frenchman he leaped from his...

That night Jan Thoreau passed for the last time back into the shelter of his forests; and all that night he traveled, and with each mile that he left behind him something larger...

For a few moments Jan stood with his back to Mélisse and his eyes upon the carnival about the great fire. As he looked, the third caribou was pulled down from its spit, and the...

From the day after the caribou roast the fur-gatherers began scattering. The Eskimos left the next morning. On the second day Mukee's people from the west set off along the edge...

Peace followed in the blighted trails of the Red Terror. Again the forest world breathed without fear; but from Hudson's Bay to Athabasca, and as far south as the thousand water...

There was music that night in Le Pas. Jan heard it before he came to the first of the scattered lights, and the dogs pricked up their ears. Kazan, the one-eyed, whined under his...

The next morning Jan struck out over his old trail to the Hasabala. The Crees were gone. He spent a day swinging east and west, and found old trails leading into the north.

"You have company, my dear!" cried Jean to Mélisse. "Two gentlemen fresh from London on the last boat, and one of them younger and handsomer than your own Jan Thoreau. They are...

Jan was glad when the evening came, and was gone. Not until Jean and Iowaka had said good night with Croisset and his wife, and both Cummins and Mélisse had gone to their rooms,...

When he came into the cabin for breakfast that morning, Jan's face showed signs of the struggle through which he had gone. Cummins had already finished, and he found Mélisse alo...

Cummins returned the next day--not that his work among the wild trappers to the south was finished, but because he had suffered a hurt in falling from a slippery ledge. When Jan...

For many minutes after the last gentle breath had passed from the woman's lips, Jan Thoreau played softly upon his violin. It was the great, heart-broken sob of John Cummins tha...

Gravois did not stay to see the effect of his last words. Only he knew, as he went through the door, that her eyes were following him, and that if he looked at her she would cal...

The words came in a gentle whisper from the woman's lips. One white, thin hand lifted itself weakly to the rough face of the man who was kneeling beside her bed, and the great d...

In the days that followed, there came other things which Jan could not understand, and which he made no great effort to understand. He talked little, even to Cummins. He listene...

It was the big night at the post--the night that is known from Athabasca to Hudson's Bay as the night of the caribou roast. A week had passed, and there were no more furs to be...

That night, leaving Thornton still at supper in the little old Windsor Hotel, Jan slipped away, and with Kazan at his heels, crossed the frozen Saskatchewan to the spruce forest...

Jan had aged five years during those two hours in the office of the sub-commissioner; he aged now as Thornton looked at him. There came the same tired, hopeless glow into his ey...

"Gravois, will you shake hands with me?" he said. "I want to thank you for what you did to me yesterday. I deserved it. I have asked Miss Mélisse to forgive me--and I want to sh...

One afternoon, in the beginning of the mush-snow, a long team of rakish Malemutes, driven by an Athabasca French-Canadian, raced wildly into the clearing about the post. A serie...

Nineteen years before these same rumors had come up from the south, and the Red Terror had followed. The horror of it still remained with the forest people; for a thousand unmar...

During the week that followed, Jean's little black eyes were never far distant from Cummins' cabin. Without being observed, he watched Mélisse and Dixon, and not even to Iowaka...

The big room was empty when Jan came quietly through the open door. He stopped to listen, and caught a faint laugh from the other room, and then another; and to give warning of...

Upon Jan now fell a great responsibility. Mélisse was his own. Days passed before he could realize the fullness of his possession. He had meant to go by the Athabasca water rout...

It was a long winter for Cummins and Mélisse. It was a longer one for Jan. He had taken with him a letter from the factor at Lac Bain to the factor at Churchill, and he found qu...

Half a mile down the ridge, where it sloped up gradually from the forests and swamps of the plain, a team of powerful Malemutes were running at the head of a toboggan. On the sl...

The passing of Cummins' wife was as quiet as had been her coming. With bare heads, their shaggy hair falling wildly about their faces, their lips set tight to choke back their g...

All that spring and summer Jan spent in the thick caribou swamps and low ridge-mountains along the Barrens. It was two months before he appeared at the post again, and then he r...