e
forest road was in bloom, scarlet fire-flowers reddened the trail, wild
hyacinths and golden-freckled violets played hide-and-seek with the
forget-me-nots in the meadows, and the sky was a great splash of
velvety blue. It was the north triumphant--at the edge of civilization;
the north triumphant, and yet paying its tribute. For at the other end
were waiting the royal Upper Ten Thousand and the smart Four Hundred
with all the beau monde behind them, coveting and demanding that
tribute to their sex--the silken furs of a far country, the life's
blood and labor of a land infinitely beyond the pale of drawing-rooms
and the whims of fashion.

Carrigan had thought of these things that hour ago, as he sat at the
edge of the first of the Three Rivers, the great Athabasca. From down
the other two, the Slave and the Mackenzie, the fur fleets of the
unmapped country had been toiling since the first breakups of ice.
Steadily, week after week, the north had been emptying itself of its
picturesque tide of life and voice, of muscle and brawn, of laughter
and song--and wealth. Through, long months of deep winter, in ten
thousand shacks and tepees and cabins, the story of this June had been
written as fate had written it each winter for a hundred years or more.
A story of the triumph of the fittest. A story of tears, of happiness
here and there, of hunger and plenty, of new life and quick death; a
story of strong men and strong women, living in the faith of their
forefathers, with the best blood of old England and France still
surviving in their veins.

Through those same months of winter, the great captains of trade in the
city of Edmonton had been preparing for the coming of the river
brigades. The hundred and fifty miles of trail between that last city
outpost of civilization and Athabasca Landing, the door that opened
into the North, were packed hard by team and dog-sledge and packer
bringing up the freight that for another year was to last the forest
people of the Three River country--a domain reaching from the Landing
to the Arctic Ocean. In competition fought the drivers of Revillon
Brothers and Hudson's Bay, of free trader and independent adventurer.
Freight that grew more precious with each mile it advanced must reach
the beginning of the waterway. It started with the early snows. The
tide was at full by midwinter. In temperature that nipped men's lungs
it did not cease. There was no let-up in the whip-hands of the masters