th. And though it had twisted
and disrupted the earth under his feet for a time, it had brought its
compensation. For he had come to love the north with a passionate
devotion. It was, in a way, his God. It seemed to him that the time had
never been when he had lived any other life than this under the open
skies. He was thirty-seven now. A bit of a philosopher, as philosophy
comes to one in a sun-cleaned and unpolluted air, A good-humored
brother of humanity, even when he put manacles on other men's wrists;
graying a little over the temples--and a lover of life. Above all else
he was that. A lover of life. A worshiper at the shrine of God's
Country.

So he sat, that hour ago, deep in the wilderness eighty miles north of
Athabasca Landing, congratulating himself on the present conditions of
his existence. A hundred and eighty miles farther on was Fort McMurray,
and another two hundred beyond that was Chipewyan, and still beyond
that the Mackenzie and its fifteen-hundred-mile trail to the northern
sea. He was glad there was no end to this world of his. He was glad
there were few people in it. But these people he loved. That hour ago
he had looked out on the river as two York boats had forged up against
the stream, craft like the long, slim galleys of old, brought over
through the Churchill and Clearwater countries from Hudson's Bay. There
were eight rowers in each boat. They were singing. Their voices rolled
between the walls of the forests. Their naked arms and shoulders
glistened in the sun. They rowed like Vikings, and to him they were
symbols of the freedom of the world. He had watched them until they
were gone up-stream, but it was a long time before the chanting of
their voices had died away. And then he had risen from beside his tiny
fire, and had stretched himself until his muscles cracked. It was good
to feel the blood running red and strong in one's veins at the age of
thirty-seven. For Carrigan felt the thrill of these days when strong
men were coming out of the north--days when the glory of June hung over
the land, when out of the deep wilderness threaded by the Three Rivers
came romance and courage and red-blooded men and women of an almost
forgotten people to laugh and sing and barter for a time with the
outpost guardians of a younger and more progressive world. It was north
of Fifty-Four, and the waters of a continent flowed toward the Arctic
Sea. Yet soon would the strawberries be crushing red underfoot; th