Something in Jack’s decisive manner of saying this must have warned the talkative one the matter had been threshed out as far as was needful for the time being and that it would be just as well if they relapsed into silence so as to consider other matters that were really more important.
So Perk clamped on the lid and talked only to himself for a long time afterwards, a sport that generally afforded him considerable joy and satisfaction.
Time passed, with their ship keeping up its swift passage, now close to the tops of outlying ridges and anon passing over valleys so far beneath the voyagers that objects to the naked eye assumed very diminutive proportions.
No further mule pack-trains were sighted but then Jack had considered this fact and had no expectation of meeting up with a second caravan. Because of the existing necessity for guarding the high-priced booze they dealt in, so as to be prepared to resist an encounter with bandits known in the rum racket under the name of hijackers, the expeditions could only be sent off at stated periods and there might not be another for a week or two.
It was all pretty wild country over which they swept as on the wings of an eagle heading for the breeding places of its species far up toward the Arctic Circle and in due time Perk began to weary of staring down at such monotonous pictures.
Once they passed over a railroad and he felt thrilled by the thought that man’s ability to invade the most inaccessible regions of the earth had put a bit and bridle into the mouth of even so wild a horse as such a land could be compared to in the mind of a visionary fellow like Perk.
On they went, still penetrating deeper into the mysterious northland and heading for that isolated post of the Canadian Mounted Police that was said to be at the extreme edge of the uninhabited stretch lying south of those desolate barrens touching on the Arctic regions where, according to Perk’s way of describing things, might be found the jumping-off place that gradually fades away into the near Polar ice-cap.
It was as Jack had learned, a great country for pelts and with signs of gold cropping out of the soil in a myriad of places. The only living human beings likely to be met with would be lone trappers running lines of traps in the dreadful winter season, occasional daring prospectors and stray Indian villagers during the summer when they carried on their annual hunt for meat to be cured for winter use.
Here too, might be found in secret hideouts more than a few fugitives from justice—men who had fled from the long arm of the law and lived the lives of hermits, their hand against all others and compelled by necessity to play the part of desperadoes.
Such a dominating character as the Hawk would not be long amidst such surroundings before he gathered to his standard a select number of like bold spirits. These would be only too willing to follow him in his raids on the stores of isolated fur-takers, white or red, it mattered not, since all men looked alike in their eyes or making occasional more ambitious forays upon some outpost and trading center of the great Hudson Bay Company.