The big books of The Company a year or two ago in unmistakable round-hand declared that one Running Rabbit, lawful widow of Blueskin, was entitled to draw from the coffers clear-side bacon and a modicum of flour. But one quarterly paysheet, returned to Winnipeg from Fort Churchill, showed that Running Rabbit in addition to her food allowance had been handed out forty cents' worth of cotton. Stern enquiry, backed by red-tape and The Company's seal as big as a saucer, was sent up to the Churchill Factor. Why had the allowance of Mrs. Blueskin (née Running Rabbit) been exceeded? By "return mail" nine months later the Factor reported,
"The widow's gone,
Her tent's forsaken,
No more she comes
For flour and bacon.
N.B. The cotton was used for her shroud."
The Ancient Company was penny-wise, but in spite of the copybook line, not pound-foolish, as its dividend paysheets conclusively prove.
There is no desire to show forth these silent ones of the North as infallible men and immaculate. They make many mistakes; they were and are delightfully human, and we couldn't picture one of them with a saintly aureole. But in the past, as in the present, they were large men; they honoured their word, and you couldn't buy them. Men of action, whether inside fort walls, bartering in the tepee of the Indian, or off on silent trails alone,—it has been given to each of them to live life at firsthand. In every undertaking the determining factor of success is men, and not money or monopoly. And because the North still breeds men of the H.B. type, the eye of The Great Company is not dimmed, its force not abated.
We spoke with no fewer than three men at The Landing who came into the North in the year of the Klondike rush, that is, just ten years ago. Into the human warp and woof of the Great Lone Land of Northern Canada the Klondike gold-rush intruded a new strand. The news of the strike on Yukon fields flashed round the world on wires invisible and visible, passed by word of mouth from chum to chum, and by moccasin telegraph was carried to remotest corners of the continent. Gold-fever is a disease without diagnosis or doctor—infectious, contagious, and hereditary; if its germ once stirs in a man's blood, till the day of his death he is not immune from an attack. The discovery of gold-dust in Dawson sent swarming through the waterways of sub-Arctic Canada a heterogeneous horde,—gamblers of a hundred hells, old-time miners from quiet firesides, beardless boys from their books, human parasites of two continents, and dreamers from the Seven Seas.
Coastwise they sought the North by steamers from 'Frisco, Seattle, and Vancouver Island, and of the numbers of these the shipping offices have some records. But of that vast army who from the east and from the south travelled inland waterways towards the golden goal no tabulation has ever been made. Singly they went, in groups, and by partnerships of two and three. There was no route marked out by which they were to reach the glittering streams of which they dreamed; the general direction of north and west was all that guided them. Athabasca Landing was the portal through which they passed, and by every northward stream they travelled,—down the Athabasca toward the Mackenzie and up the Athabasca to the Peace, leaving stranded men and stranded boats on every shore. By raft and dug-out, scow and canoe, men essayed to travel rapid waterways who had never handled craft before, and the Indians still point out to you near Grand Rapids on the Athabasca the site of the Mounted Police Station where Sergeant Anderson rescued a dozen tenderfoots from drowning.