mith the
Silent knows, and he won't tell.

Sometimes, over the pipe, he forgets and gives me glimpses into the
winter camp, with the sun going out like a candle: the hastily made camp
with the half-breed spotting the dry wood against the coming moment when
night would drop over the forest like a curtain over a stage; the
"lean-to" between the burning logs, where he dozes or dreams, barely
beyond the reach of the flames; the silence all about, Jaquis pulling at
his pipe, and the huskies sleeping in the snow like German babies under
the eiderdown. Sometimes, out of the love of bygone days, he tells of
long toilsome journeys with the sun hiding behind clouds out of which an
avalanche of snow falls, with nothing but the needle to tell where he
hides; of hungry dogs and half starved horses, and lakes and rivers
fifty and a hundred miles out of the way.

Once, he told me, he sent an engineer over a low range to spy out a
pass. By the maps and other data they figured that he would be gone
three days, but a week went by and no word from the pathfinder. Ten days
and no news. On the thirteenth day, when Smith was preparing to go in
search of the wanderer, the running gear of the man and the framework of
the dogs came into camp. He was able to smile and say to Smith that he
had been ten days without food, save a little tea. For the dogs he had
had nothing.

A few days rest and they were on the trail again, or on the "go" rather;
and you might know that disciple of Smith the Silent six months or six
years before he would, unless you worked him, refer to that ten days'
fast. They think no more of that than a Jap does of dying. It's all in
the day's work.

Suddenly, Smith said, the sun swung north, the days grew longer. The sun
grew hot and the snow melted on the south hills; the hushed rivers,
rending their icy bonds, went roaring down to the Lakes and out towards
the Arctic Ocean. And lo, suddenly, like the falling of an Arctic night,
the momentary spring passed and it was summer time.

Then it was that Smith came into Edmonton to make his first report, and
here we met for the first time for many snows.

Joyously, as a boy kicks the cover off on circus morning, this Northland
flings aside her winter wraps and stands forth in her glorious garb of
summer. The brooklets murmur, the rivers sing, and by their banks and
along the lakes waterfowl frolic, and overhead glad birds, that seem to
have dropped from the sky, sing joyfully