The Woman from Outside / [On Swan River]

Obvious errors in the text have been corrected. Changes have also been made to make spelling, hyphenation, and punctuation use consistent. Changed sections are marked in the text with a thin gray underline. Hovering your mouse over the text will display the correction, like this .
By HULBERT FOOTNER Author of “The Fur Bringers” etc.
THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY Publishers New York
Copyright, 1921 by THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
CHAPTER
On a January afternoon, as darkness was beginning to gather, the “gang” sat around the stove in the Company store at Fort Enterprise discussing that inexhaustible question, the probable arrival of the mail. The big lofty store, with its glass front, its electric lights, its stock of expensive goods set forth on varnished shelves, suggested a city emporium rather than the Company’s most north-westerly post, nearly a thousand miles from civilization; but human energy accomplishes seeming miracles in the North as elsewhere, and John Gaviller the trader was above all an energetic man. Throughout the entire North they point with pride to Gaviller’s flour mill, his big steamboat, his great yellow clap-boarded house—two storeys and attic, and a fence of palings around it! Why, at Fort Enterprise they even have a sidewalk, the only one north of fifty-five!
“I don’t see why Hairy Ben can’t come down,” said Doc Giddings—Doc was the grouch of the post—“the ice on the river has been fit for travelling for a month now.”
“Ben can’t start from the Crossing until the mail comes through from the Landing,” said Gaviller. “It can’t start from the Landing until the ice is secure on the Big River, the Little River, and across Caribou Lake.” Gaviller was a handsome man of middle life, who took exceeding good care of himself, and ruled his principality with an amiable relentlessness. They called him the “Czar,” and it did not displease him.
“Everybody knows Caribou Lake freezes over first,” grumbled the doctor.