ody giving a damn. For some reason I can't guess you've
already done more for me than I can ever hope to repay. You got me out
of prison, you wakened hope and self-respect in me when I thought they
were dead, and you've proved a friend when I'd given up any thought of
ever knowing human friendship again. I was down and out, Ezram. Anything
you want me to do I'll do to the last ditch. You know I can fight--you
know how a man can fight if it's his last chance. I've got some bonus
money coming to me from the Canadian Government--and I'll put that in
too, because we'll be needing horses and supplies and things that cost
money. But I can't take all that from a stranger. You must know how it
is. A man can't, while he's young and strong, accept charity--"

"Good Lord, it ain't charity!" the old man shouted, drowning him out.
"I'm gettin' as much pleasure out of it as you." His voice sank again;
and there was no line of mirth in his face.

"It was long ago, in Montreal," Ezram went on, after a pause. "I knew
your mother, as a girl. She married a better man, but I told her that
every wish of hers was law to me. You're her son."

IV

Night is always a time of mystery in Snowy Gulch--that little cluster of
frame shacks lost and far in the northern reaches of the Caribou Range.
Shadows lie deep, pale lights spring up here and there in windows, with
gaping, cavernous darkness between; a wet mist is clammy on the face. At
such times one forgets that here is a town, an enduring outpost of
civilization, and can remember only the forests that stretch so heavy
and dark on every side. Indeed the town seems simply swallowed up in
these forests, immersed in their silence, overspread by their gloom, and
the red gods themselves walk like sentries in the main street.

The breath that is so fragrant and strange between the fronting rows of
shacks is simply that of the forest: inept the woodsman who would not
recognize it at once. The silence is a forest silence, and if the air is
tense and electric, it is because certain wilderness forces that no
white man can name but which surely dwell in the darker thickets have
risen and are in possession.

It is not a time when human beings are at their best and strongest.
There is an instinctive, haunting feeling which, though not fear, wakens
a feeling of inadequacy and meekness. Only a few--those who have given
their love and their lives to the wild places--have any idea of
sympathetic und