ac Bain with me. Some morning I'll give you to
Bucky Nome for breakfast. And then, M'sieur--then we shall see what we
shall see."

Later that night he wrote a few words on a slip of paper and tacked
the paper to the inside of his door. To any who might follow in his
footsteps it conveyed this information and advice:

NOTICE!

This cabin and what's in it are quasheed by me. Fill your gizzard but
not your pockets.

Steele, Northwest Mounted.

Chapter II. A Face Out Of The Night

Steele came up to the Hudson's Bay Company's post at Lac Bain on the
seventh day after the big storm, and Breed, the factor, confided two
important bits of information to him while he was thawing out before the
big box-stove in the company's deserted and supply-stripped store.
The first was that a certain Colonel Becker and his wife had left Fort
Churchill, on Hudson's Bay, to make a visit at Lac Bain; the second,
that Buck Nome had gone westward a week before and had not returned.
Breed was worried, not over Nome's prolonged absence, but over the
anticipated arrival of the other two. According to the letter which had
come to him from the Churchill factor. Colonel Becker and his wife had
come over on the last supply ship from London, and the colonel was a
high official in the company's service. Also, he was an old gentleman.
Ostensibly he had no business at Lac Bain, but was merely on a vacation,
and wished to see a bit of real life in the wilderness.

Breed's grizzled face was miserable.

"Why don't they send 'em down to York Factory or Nelson House?" he
demanded of Steele. "They've got duck feathers, three women, and a
civilized factor at the Nelson, and there ain't any of 'em here--not
even a woman!"

Steele shrugged his shoulders as Breed mentioned the three women at
Nelson.

"There are only two women there now," he replied. "Since a certain Bucky
Nome passed that way, one of them has gone into the South."

"Well, two, then," said Breed, who had not caught the flash of fire in
the other's eyes. "But I tell you there ain't a one here, Steele, not
even an Indian--and that dirty Cree, Jack, is doing the cooking. Blessed
Saints, I caught him mixing biscuit dough in the wash basin the other
day, and I've been eating those biscuits ever since our people went
out to their traplines! There's you, and Nome, two Crees, a 'half'
and myself--and that's every soul there'll be at Lac Bain until the
mid-winter run of fur. Now, what in Heav