spent his life in the Indian country and knew the Cree make-up—his superstition and childlike belief in the supernatural. The hardy Frenchman had smiled as the old Cree gravely pictured the fate that awaited him and his Marie in the far-off valley. He had more than once heard a lynx or a wolverine, called Injun-devil, fill the forest with demoniacal caterwauling that would have frozen the blood of a superstitious Indian, and later, when he found the vocalist in his trap, had terminated the nocturnal voice-culture by knocking the brute on the head with a club. For him the land of evil spirits held no terror.
The next day Hertel shoved his heavily loaded canoe from the beach at Ptarmigan Lake House, called a last bonjour to the factor, and with Marie handling the bow paddle, headed west. Day after day the voyageurs, following the Cree's map, toiled by river and lake and portage toward the Harricanaw headwaters, until at last their canoe floated on the Devil's River of the Crees. Then Hertel poled up the swift stream to its headwater lakes, where they were to net the whitefish needed for winter food for the dogs.
As they pushed up-stream between timbered hills that rolled away to the blue horizon, the woman in the bow exclaimed with delight at the beauty of the valley vistas which every turn of the river opened to their eyes. And each outburst of admiration brought a low chuckle from the stern-man toiling at his pole, as he thought how little Marie might appreciate the beauty of this land had she but known that these for-
