e manned by four lean-shouldered paddlers.

Just below "the narrows," on the northeastern shore of Snare Lake, and
almost upon the site of Old Fort Enterprise, erected and occupied by
Lieutenant, later Sir John Franklin during the second winter of his
first Arctic expedition, Bob MacNair had built his fort. The fort
itself differed in no important particular from many of the log trading
forts of the Hudson Bay Company. Grouped about the long, low building,
within the enclosure of the log stockade, were the cabins of Indians
who had forsaken the vicissitudes of the lean, barren grounds and
attached themselves permanently to MacNair's colony.

Under his tutelage, they learned to convert the work of their hands
into something more nearly approaching the comforts of existence than
anything they had ever known. Where, as trappers of fur, they had
succeeded, by dint of untold hardship and privation and suffering, in
obtaining the barest necessities of life from the great fur company,
they now found themselves housed in warm, comfortable cabins, eating
good food, and clothing their bodies, and the bodies of their wives and
children, in thick, warm clothing that defied the rigours of the Arctic
winters.

While to the credit of each man, upon MacNair's books, stood an amount
in tokens of "made beaver," which to any trapper in all the Northland
would have spelled wealth beyond wildest dreams. And so they came to
respect this stern, rugged man who dealt with them fairly--to love him,
and also to fear him. And upon Snare Lake his word became the law,
from which there was no appeal. Tender as a woman in sickness,
counting no cost or hardship too dear in the rendering of assistance to
the needy, he was at the same time hard and unbending toward wilful
offenders, and a very real terror to the enemies of his people.

He had killed men for selling whiskey to his Indians. And those of his
own people who drank the whiskey, he had flogged with
dog-whips--floggings that had been administered in no half-hearted or
uncertain manner, and that had ceased only upon the tiring of his arm.
And many there were among his Indians who could testify that the arm
was slow to tire.

To this little colony, upon the fourth day after his departure from
Chloe Elliston's school on the Yellow Knife, came LeFroy with his
freighted canoe. And because it was not his first trip among them, all
knew his mission.

It so happened that at the time Mac