told him. "Up
here, as you know, men don't get no complimentary epithets unless they
deserve 'em. Some men, Ben, are like weasels. You've seen 'em. You've
seen human rats, too. As if the souls they carried around with 'em was
the souls of rats. Of course you remember 'Grizzly' Silverdale? Did you
ever see any one who in disposition and looks and walk and everything
reminded you so much of a grizzly bear? I've known men like sheep, and
men with the faithful souls of dogs. You remember when you got in the
big fight in the Le Perray bar?"

"I don't think I'll ever forget it again."

"That's the night the name came on you, to stay. You remember how you'd
drive into one of them, leap away, then tear into another. Like a wolf
for all the world! You was always hard to get into a fight, but you
know as well as I do, and I ain't salvin' you when I say it, that you're
the most terrible, ferocious fighter, forgettin' everything but blood,
that ever paddled a canoe on the Athabaska. Some men, Ben, seem to have
the spirit of the wolf right under their skins, a sort of a wild
instinct that might have come straight down from the stone age, for all
I know. You happen to be one of 'em, the worst I ever saw. Maybe you
don't remember, but you took your bull moose before you was thirteen
years old."

Ben sat dreaming. The Athabaska Rapids was not an empty name to him now.
He remembered the day he had won the canoe race at Lodge Pole. Other
exploits occurred to him,--of brutal, savage brawls in river taverns, of
adventures on the trail, of struggling with wild rivers when his canoe
capsized, of running the great logs down through white waters. It was
his world, these far-stretching wildernesses. And he blessed, with all
the fervency of his heart, the man who had brought him home.

He went to his bed, but sleep did not at once come to him. He lay with
hushed breathing, listening to the little, secret noises, known so well,
of the wilderness night. He heard the wild creatures start forth on
their midnight journeys. Once a lynx mewed at the edge of the forest;
and he laughed aloud when some large creature--probably a moose--grunted
and splashed water in the near-by beaver meadow.

Thus ended the first of a brilliant succession of joyous days,
descending the stream in the daylight hours and camping on the bank at
night. Every day they plunged deeper into the heart of the wilderness,
and every hour Ben felt more at home.

It was only pla