some where not
even the Indians could penetrate. Partly for this reason the district
was rich in game: the caribou, moose, lynx, bear, wolf, beaver,--
wolverine, and all the smaller fur-bearing animals of the North
abounded there. Seventy miles to the southwestward lay the nearest
point of white habitation, where stood the Hudson Bay Company's Fort
of God's Voice. Between Murder Point and the coast, for two hundred
and fifty miles, there was no white settlement until the river's mouth
was reached, where the Company's House of the Crooked Creek had been
erected on the shores of the Bay. With his nearest neighbours, seventy
miles distant at God's Voice, Granger had no intercourse, for he was
regarded by them as an outcast inasmuch as he was an independent
trader. Once was the time when Prince Rupert's _Company of Adventurers
of England trading in the Hudson's Bay_ had held the monopoly of the
fur trade over all this territory, from the Atlantic seaboard to the
Pacific Coast; then to have been caught trapping or trading privately
had meant almost certain death to the trespasser. Now that the powers
of the Company had been curtailed, the only manner in which a Hudson
Bay factor could show his displeasure toward the interloper was by
ignoring his presence--a very real penalty in a land of loneliness,
where, at the best, men can only hope to meet once or twice a
year--and by rendering his existence as unbearable and silent as
possible in every lawful and private way. In the art of ostracising,
Robert Pilgrim, the factor at God's Voice, was a past master; during
the two and a half years that Granger had been in Keewatin he had had
direct communication with no one of the Company's white employees. On
occasions certain of its Cree Indians and half-breed trappers had come
to him stealthily, at dead of night, to see whether he would not offer
them better terms for their season's catch of furs, or to inquire
whether he would not give them liquor in exchange, the selling of
which to an Indian in Keewatin is a punishable offence. These were
usually loose characters who, being heavily in debt to the Company,
were trying to postpone payment by selling to Granger on the sly; yet,
even these men, when day had dawned, would pass him on the river
without recognition, as if he were a stick or a block of ice. However,
only by dealing with such renegades could he hope to pick up any
profit for the proprietors of his store. His every gain was