CHAPTER I

THE LOG HOUSE

"Do you suppose anything has happened to him?" asked the boy; "do you, Nell?"

He had been asking that question a great many times a day for a good many days. Every time he asked it his sister said, "Oh no, of course not," and set about any sort of work to prove she was not thinking anxious thoughts. At last, however, her answer was rather slower in coming, and on this particular occasion no answer came till David touched her arm.

"Do you, Nell?" he urged.

"I don't know. I shouldn't think so," she said, but instead of getting busy she sat still and stared at the red-hot stove, her strong hard hands clasped round her knees, and a frown on her forehead--actually doing nothing at all but just think!

This state of things was surprising enough to make "Da," as she called her young brother, more persistent than ever. He was a big, strong, square-shouldered boy of twelve, or thereabouts, and his sister was to him very much what the Captain of the First Eleven might be to a boy in an English school. She was wonderful. She could do anything and everything that he understood and that came into his life, as well--better than anyone he knew. Besides the jobs that men left over--in his experience--and which Nell did as cleverly as the mother who had died about five years before.

Da had entire confidence in her, and who shall say he had not a right to, considering all that he saw and knew about her!

She was fifteen; a head and shoulders taller than himself, and apparently as strong as their father. Her dark red hair was short as his own. That is to say, as short as hair can be where people have no shops and do their own hair-cutting. Her eyes were greenish grey and sharp as the keen, still eyes of the grey lynx that got trapped once in a way in the snares set for mink and martens.

David admired her hair and eyes with all his heart, chiefly because she was the only member of their small family like that--he and his father having darkish eyes and hair. Nell was supposed to have taken after a Scottish ancestress, with a vigorous character, not after the fair little mother with yellow hair and blue eyes; and when people start off like that in an independent manner they usually take a line of their own all through.

In fact, Nell Lindsay was a girl to be trusted; dependable and clever, which was a very good thing, because she needed every bit of it in the present crisis.

She and her young brother were alone in the log house--or shack--more than a hundred miles from any settlement. The two nearest were Abbitibbi House on the lake, away to the eastward, and Brunswick House, north on Moose River. Possibly the distance was equal, and Nell calculated it at a hundred and fifty miles either way.

That is nothing much in a country of railways, or even of good roads, but it is a long way over trackless waste, pathless forest, and snow--without guide, without help from human company.

When Nell did not answer David's persistent questions any longer, it was because she was thinking about the one hundred and fifty miles--and more--that lay between the shack and friends. It was friends she wanted. There were men nearer than that, but Nell was not sure they were friends, and therein lay the whole trouble, you see.

Over all that wilderness of forest and waste, river and lake, there lived trappers who had marked out certain districts as their own particular trapping grounds. Some were Indians, some white men who had taken up this life for the freedom and profit of making money by selling pelts--that is skins--to the traders who bought them up for the big Companies.

It was an understood thing that the trappers did not poach on each other's grounds. If they tried they ran the risk of being shot by the rightful owner. They were rough men, and followed rough laws of their own making.

The traders came round in early spring and bought up the fur. Or perhaps the trappers took great bundles of pelts away to the trading posts, got their money and spent it enjoying themselves to make up for the hardships of winter. But Andrew Lindsay was never one of these. He bought his flour, tea, bacon, and tobacco from the traders, sold his pelts and kept his money, so that after a bit it came to be common talk that he had saved a lot and hidden it in, or near, the log house. He was not the sort of man to imagine that people might think this. He loved the wild lands for the beauty and grandeur, and hated the work of an office and the close life in towns. This feeling had driven him north from San Francisco when he was first married. Here he had been in the Dominion, winter and summer, ever since, but he had not lost sight of the importance of education for his boy, and the money was saving up for that. David was to be an engineer. The years of work had paid very well and Nell knew her father's plan. Also she knew about the money, and that this was perhaps the last winter they would spend in the shack among the woods on the steep hills that ran for over a thousand miles from the northern frontier of Ontario to the Watchish Mountains in North-East Territory. The girl was content either way. Whatever her father decided was right, she thought. The winter was coming to an end very soon--it was the last week in March--and he had gone on his last round to look at traps on the more distant runways. The last, because fur gets thin and poor, and loses its thick beauty when the terrible cold of winter is giving before spring.

And then, when it was the last thing they would have thought of, this blow had fallen--Lindsay had not come back. He had gone out into the glittering light of the snowy world, with his gun, his double-lined fur sleeping bag, and food enough for four days. _Eight_ days had passed, and he had not returned.

Now that is how matters stood on a certain afternoon as the grey dusk began to creep through the trees and close in round the lonely log house. It was a difficult position for the girl, but she never for a moment gave way to impatience.

This house of theirs was as different from an English home as could well be--which mattered not at all to the young Lindsay pair, because they had no idea what an English house was like.

This house was built of rough logs--one big room in the middle and either end partitioned off, thus making two small bedrooms. This was considered luxurious, as most of the trappers had but one room in the shack, for sleeping and eating, and work, too. The walls were just rough logs inside as well as out, the cracks between were stuffed in with mud and the coarse moss that grows up north. Over this skins were hung, on the floor big skins were laid. From the rafters bacon hung and onions grown in the summer. In the corners stood sacks of potatoes and flour. The former is very important food in a country that is frozen up about seven months of the year, because when you cannot get green stuff there is risk of scurvy, and raw potatoes are the cure for that. They must be kept from the least touch of frost, of course, otherwise they go rotten.

On the floor in one corner was a pile of skins smaller and more valuable than the grey wolf, the black bear, and the yellow puma of the hills, that hung on the walls.

As Nell sat by the big stove thinking, her keen eyes wandered from one possession to another. Finally they rested on the dog and considered him thoughtfully.

Now this dog was not the kind you would expect to find in a trapper's hut, because he was close-haired, while the dogs used to pull sledges in all parts of the north lands have thick coats and bushy tails. They are called "huskies" and have a lot of wolf in their composition. In the very far north they train in teams of four up to twelve and are wonderfully clever at their work, taking a great pride in it, and refusing to let other dogs take their place in the line. But if they are strong and clever they are also exceedingly savage, and if one of their number gets badly hurt--so that he cannot defend himself--they set upon him and eat him, just as wolves do when one of the pack is disabled.

"Robin Lindsay," as Nell called him, was in no way that kind of dog. He was nearly black, with a broad chest and smooth, close coat. He had ears that drooped forward like a hound's, a wrinkled forehead, and wise brown eyes. Certainly he was all sorts of dog, but it was all of the best, which mattered a great deal in that terribly lonely place. Andrew Lindsay had brought him home one day, four years ago, having bought him from a man who was going to make an end of what he thought was a useless puppy.

Now he lay on the thick grey skin of a wolf, his nose between his paws--watching Nell's face with little twitches of his thoughtful forehead. He knew there was something the matter, and waited.

"What shall you do, Nell, if Dad doesn't come back to-night?" asked David, stopping in his work of carving a tiny little sled out of wood. "You'll have to do something, shan't you?"

Nell got up from her seat on the bench, walked slowly to the door, slid back the heavy bolt, opened the door and looked out. A raw chill entered and seemed to creep into every corner on the instant. Robin rose to his feet, stalked after his mistress and sniffed the doorstep enquiringly.

"I thought so," said the girl as she shut out the bitter dusk.

"Thought what?"

"I thought it was snowing, and it is."

"I suppose you mean that will wipe out Dad's trail? Is that it?" asked the boy.

"It wouldn't make a scrap of difference to Robin, he'd follow a trail through inches of snow. You simply can't bluff him. He always knows. No, I wasn't thinking about the trail exactly--not in that sort of way, anyhow--it's not much good hunting a trail when you pretty well know where it's going to lead you at the start. I mean, Da, that I guess where Dad is. When I'm certain I'll tell you most likely. Matter of fact I was _hoping_ for snow."

"You were!"

"It'll come in useful if I'm not mistaken," said Nell in a conclusive tone.

David stared at her, puzzled. He believed she was the cleverest girl alive, but he did not even remotely understand what she was talking about. On the face of the situation snow was the most tiresome impediment to any sort of move. He knew it might be expected now, because when the bitterest, glittering frost began to give way to the cold that comes between winter and spring, the snow was softer underfoot and falls might be constantly expected. Slight as the change was, the wind had not the same icy breath. Not that one felt warmer, on the contrary, the faint tinge of damp made the air cold beyond description, but probably there was not quite the same danger of frost-bite for the face and hands.

David knew all these things as a matter of course. He had been born and brought up in the country. But he did not see what the snow could have to do with the present trouble! However, it was better to go on carving his sled than show ignorance, so he waited, glancing up at his sister every few seconds, as she paced slowly away from the stove and back to it again, in a kind of thoughtful sentry-go.

Then Robin growled, deep down in his throat. He had not settled down again on his bed, but sat up watching Nell's promenade. He had lifted his muzzle and sniffed the air with a delicate, sensitive movement as though he were feeling something very gently.

Then he growled--very low and deep.