Murder Point: A Tale of Keewatin

John Granger, agent on the Last Chance River in the interests of Garnier, Parwin, and Wrath, independent traders in the territory of Keewatin, sat alone in his store at Murder Point. He sat upon an upturned box, with an empty pipe between his lips. In the middle of the room stood an iron stove which blazed red hot; through the single window, toward which he faced, the gold sun shone, made doubly resplendent in its shining by the reflected light cast up by the leagues of all-surrounding snow and ice.
Speaking to himself, as is the habit of men who have lived many months alone in the aboriginal silence of the North, Well, and what next? he asked.
He had been reviewing the uses to which he had put his thirty years of life, and was feeling far from satisfied. That a man of breeding, who had been given the advantages of a classical and university education, and was in addition an English barrister, should at the age of thirty be conducting an independent trader's store in a distant part of northern Canada did not seem right; Granger was conscious of the incongruity. During the past two years and a half he had obstinately refused to examine his career, had fought against introspection, and had striven to forget.
In this he had been wise, for Keewatin is not a good place wherein to remember and to balance the ledger of the soul; it is too remote from human habitation, too near to God—its vastness has robbed it of all standards, so that small misdemeanours may seem huge and disastrous as the sin of Cain. Madness lurks in its swampy creeks and wanders along the edges of its woodland seas, so that the border-line between natural and supernatural is very faintly marked.
But to-day Granger had given way before the wave of emotional memories and had permitted his mind to recapitulate all the happiness which he had lost; and with this result, that like a child in a darkened house he feared to advance and stood still trembling, questioning the future, anticipating and dreading that which was next to come. It was the second week in April; the break-up of the winter had almost begun; the spring was striding up from the south and a cry of travel was in the air, both hopeful and melancholy. The world would soon be growing young again. Even in this desperate land the scars of the frost would soon be obliterated; but to his own life, he was painfully aware, the spring had vouchsafed no promise of return. Was it gone forever? he asked.