irst day in their company. But since that was out of
the question, he took his seat in the canoe each morning and faced each
stretch of troubled water with an inward prayer.

The last stretch and this last day had tried his soul to its utmost.
Pachugan lay near the end of the water route. What few miles he had to
travel beyond the post would lie along the lake shore, and the lake
reassured him with its smiling calm. Having never seen it harried by
fierce winds, pounding the beaches with curling waves, he could not
visualize it as other than it was now, glassy smooth, languid, inviting.
Over the last twenty miles of the river his guides had strained a point
now and then, just to see their passenger gasp. They would never have
another chance and it was rare sport, just as it is rare sport for
spirited youths to snowball a passer-by who does not take kindly to
their pastime.

In addition to these nerve-disturbing factors Thompson suffered from the
heat. A perverted dignity, nurtured in a hard-shell, middle-class
environment, prevented him from stripping to his undershirt. The sun's
rays, diffusing abnormal heat through the atmosphere, reflected
piercingly upward from the water, had played havoc with him. His first
act upon landing was to seat himself upon a flat-topped boulder and dab
tenderly at his smarting face while his men hauled up the canoe. That in
itself was a measure of his inefficiency, as inefficiency is measured in
the North. The Chief Factor of a district large enough to embrace a
European kingdom, traveling in state from post to post, would not have
been above lending a hand to haul the canoe clear. Thompson had come to
this _terra incognita_ to preach and pray, to save men's souls. So far
it had not occurred to him that aught else might be required of a man
before he could command a respectful hearing.

Back from the beach, in a clearing hacked out of the woods, stood a
score or more of low cabins flanking a building more ambitious in scope
and structure. More than a century had passed since the first foundation
logs were laid in the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, to the Company's
glory and profit. It had been a fort then, in all that the name implies
throughout the fur country. It had boasted a stockade, a brass cannon
which commanded the great gates that swung open to friendly strangers
and were closed sharply to potential foes. But the last remnant of
Pachugan's glory had gone glimmering down the co