his efforts for support, the news of the fighting in France had fired the imagination of the Cree, The Big Chief was calling for men. Thousands of white Canadians had gone and more were going. Should the red man be found wanting? Where in all Rupert Land was there a keener eye over the sights, a more daring bow-man in Company boats, as tireless a dog-runner? And the enemies of the Great Father pressed him sorely. Down in Quebec by the big river all through the autumn the air had been torn with the speaking of the rifles in the ranges—so Nicholson had read to him—and the wide plain trampled by the feet of the marching sons of the Great Father. For a year, maybe two, a black fox would be worth hardly what an otter once brought. Far at the lonely post by the Fading Waters the deep snow mounded all that had once made his life a thing of value to him—the Montagnais girl he had married one year, and lost, all in the short space between the passing and the return of the gray geese. There were no small mouths for Joe Lecroix to feed, no ties that held him, and the Big Chief was calling for men. The word had travelled far into the north, even to the snow-swept spruces of Rupert Land, and had found the heart of one of his children.
It was a bitter trail that the Cree had chosen—the trail to the St. Maurice posts. In the Height-of-Land country the first January blizzard swept down on the team hurrying south. Burrowing into the snow with his dogs, to escape the searing wind with its scourge of fine crystals that struck like shot, he
