his winter tilt on Torngak Creek. We put in the winter there,
furring, and every time he came home from the round of traps, he'd sell
me all the pelts. I was the company, so he ran up a heap of debt. Then
he made me little small snow-shoes and skin clothes like his, and a real
beaver cap with a tail. I was surely proud when he took me hunting fur
and partridges. I was with him to the fishing, in the fall we'd hunt,
all winter we'd trap till it was time for the sealing, and only two or
three times in a year we'd be back to mother. We'd build her a stand-up
wigwam of fire-wood, so it wouldn't be lost in the snow, we'd tote her
grub from the fort, the loads of fish, and the fall salmon.

Then I'd see Pete, too, who'd got pink, with a spitting cough. He wanted
to play with me, but I wouldn't. I just couldn't. I hated to be
anywheres near him.

"Didn't I tell yez?" father would point at Pete coughing. "Didn't I warn
yez?"

But mother set her mouth in a thin line.

"Pete," said she, "is saved."

Next time we come mother was all alone.

"'The Lord gave,'" she says, "'and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be
the name of the Lord,' but it's getting kind of monotonous."

She hadn't much to say then, she didn't seem to care, but was just numb.
He wrapped her up warm on the komatik, with just a sack of clothes, her
Bible, and the album of photos from Nova Scotia, yes, and the china dogs
she carried in her arms. Father broke the trail ahead, I took the gee
pole, and when day came, we made the winter tilt. There mother kep'
house just as she would at home, so clean we was almost scared to step
indoors. We never had such grub, but she wouldn't put us in the wrong or
set up nights confessing father's sins. She didn't care any more.

It was along in March or maybe April that father was away in coarse
weather, making the round of his traps. He didn't come back. There'd
been a blizzard, a wolf-howling hurricane, blowing out a lane of bare
ground round the back of the cabin, while the big drift piled higher and
packed harder, until the comb of it grew out above our roof like a sea
breaker, froze so you could walk on the overhang. And just between dark
and duckish father's husky team came back without him.

I don't reckon I was more'n ten or eleven years old, but you see, this
Labrador is kind of serious with us, and makes even kids act
responsible. Go easy, and there's famine, freezing, blackleg, all sorts
of reasons against laz