212
XVII THE HEARING 243
XVIII A LETTER FROM MAJOR EGERTON TO HIS FRIEND ARTHUR
DONCOURT, ESQ. 256
EPILOGUE 264

THE WOMAN FROM OUTSIDE

CHAPTER I

THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN

On a January afternoon, as darkness was beginning to gather, the "gang"
sat around the stove in the Company store at Fort Enterprise discussing
that inexhaustible question, the probable arrival of the mail. The big
lofty store, with its glass front, its electric lights, its stock of
expensive goods set forth on varnished shelves, suggested a city
emporium rather than the Company's most north-westerly post, nearly a
thousand miles from civilization; but human energy accomplishes seeming
miracles in the North as elsewhere, and John Gaviller the trader was
above all an energetic man. Throughout the entire North they point with
pride to Gaviller's flour mill, his big steamboat, his great yellow
clap-boarded house--two storeys and attic, and a fence of palings around
it! Why, at Fort Enterprise they even have a sidewalk, the only one
north of fifty-five!

"I don't see why Hairy Ben can't come down," said Doc Giddings--Doc was
the grouch of the post--"the ice on the river has been fit for
travelling for a month now."

"Ben can't start from the Crossing until the mail comes through from
the Landing," said Gaviller. "It can't start from the Landing until the
ice is secure on the Big River, the Little River, and across Caribou
Lake." Gaviller was a handsome man of middle life, who took exceeding
good care of himself, and ruled his principality with an amiable
relentlessness. They called him the "Czar," and it did not displease
him.

"Everybody knows Caribou Lake freezes over first," grumbled the doctor.

"But the rivers down there are swift, and it's six hundred miles south
of here. Give them time."

"The trouble is, they wait until the horse-road is made over the ice
before starting the mail in. If the Government had the enterprise of a
ground-hog they'd send in dogs ahead."

"Nobody uses dogs down there any more."

"Well, I say 'tain't right to ask human beings to wait three months for
their mail. Who knows what may have happened since the freeze-up last
October?"

"What's happened has happened," said Father Goussard mildly, "and
knowing about it