warming like treasure-laden bees. On the last
snow they were coming in with their furs from a hundred trap-lines. Luck
was with David. On the first day Baree fought with a huge malemute and
almost killed it, and David, in separating the dogs, was slightly bitten
by the malemute. A friendship sprang up instantly between the two
masters. Bouvais was a Frenchman from Horseshoe Bay, fifty miles from
Fort Chippewyan, and a hundred and fifty straight west of Fond du Lac.
He was a fox hunter. "I bring my furs over here, m'sieu," he explained,
"because I had a fight with the factor at Fort Chippewyan and broke out
two of his teeth," which was sufficient explanation. He was delighted
when he learned that David wanted to go west. They started two days
later with a sledge heavily laden with supplies. The runners sank deep
in the growing slush, but under them was always the thick ice of Lake
Athabasca, and going was not bad, except that David's feet were always
wet. He was surprised that he did not take a "cold." "A cold--what is
that?" asked Bouvais, who had lived along the Barrens all his life.
David described a typical case of sniffles, with running at eyes and
nose, and Bouvais laughed. "The only cold we have up here is when the
lungs get touched by frost," he said, "and then you die--the following
spring. Always then. The lungs slough away." And then he asked: "Why
are you going west?"

David found himself face to face with the question, and had to answer.
"Just to toughen up a bit," he replied. "Wandering. Nothing else to do."
And after all, he thought later, wasn't that pretty near the truth? He
tried to convince himself that it was. But his hand touched the picture
of the Girl, in his breast pocket. He seemed to feel her throbbing
against it. A preposterous imagination! But it was pleasing. It warmed
his blood.

For a week David and Baree remained at Horseshoe Bay with the Frenchman.
Then they went on around the end of the lake toward Fort Chippewyan.
Bouvais accompanied them, out of friendship purely, and they travelled
afoot with fifty-pound packs on their shoulders, for in the big, sunlit
reaches the ground was already growing bare of snow. Bouvais turned back
when they were ten miles from Fort Chippewyan, explaining that it was a
nasty matter to have knocked two teeth down a factor's throat, and
particularly down the throat of the head factor of the Chippewyan and
Athabasca district. "And they went down," assured Bouva