Two on the Trail: A Story of Canada Snows

by E. E. Cowper

And then, when it was the last thing they would have thought of, this blow had fallen--Lindsay had not come back. He had gone out into the glittering light of the snowy world, with his gun, his double-lined fur sleeping bag, and food enough for four days. Eight days had passed, and he had not returned.

Now that is how matters stood on a certain afternoon as the grey dusk began to creep through the trees and close in round the lonely log house. It was a difficult position for the girl, but she never for a moment gave way to impatience.

This house of theirs was as different from an English home as could well be--which mattered not at all to the young Lindsay pair, because they had no idea what an English house was like.

This house was built of rough logs--one big room in the middle and either end partitioned off, thus making two small bedrooms. This was considered luxurious, as most of the trappers had but one room in the shack, for sleeping and eating, and work, too. The walls were just rough logs inside as well as out, the cracks between were stuffed in with mud and the coarse moss that grows up north. Over this skins were hung, on the floor big skins were laid. From the rafters bacon hung and onions grown in the summer. In the corners stood sacks of potatoes and flour. The former is very important food in a country that is frozen up about seven months of the year, because when you cannot get green stuff there is risk of scurvy, and raw potatoes are the cure for that. They must be kept from the least touch of frost, of course, otherwise they go rotten.

On the floor in one corner was a pile of skins smaller and more valuable than the grey wolf, the black bear, and the yellow puma of the hills, that hung on the walls.

As Nell sat by the big stove thinking, her keen eyes wandered from one possession to another. Finally they rested on the dog and considered him thoughtfully.

Now this dog was not the kind you would expect to find in a trapper's hut, because he was close-haired, while the dogs used to pull sledges in all parts of the north lands have thick coats and bushy tails. They are called "huskies" and have a lot of wolf in their composition. In the very far north they train in teams of four up to twelve and are wonderfully clever at their work, taking a great pride in it, and refusing to let other dogs take their place in the line. But if they are strong and clever they are also exceedingly savage, and if one of their number gets badly hurt--so that he cannot defend himself--they set upon him and eat him, just as wolves do when one of the pack is disabled.

"Robin Lindsay," as Nell called him, was in no way that kind of dog. He was nearly black, with a broad chest and smooth, close coat. He had ears that drooped forward like a hound's, a wrinkled forehead, and wise brown eyes. Certainly he was all sorts of dog, but it was all of the best, which mattered a great deal in that terribly lonely place. Andrew Lindsay had brought him home one day, four years ago, having bought him from a man who was going to make an end of what he thought was a useless puppy.

Now he lay on the thick grey skin of a wolf, his nose between his paws--watching Nell's face with little twitches of his thoughtful forehead. He knew there was something the matter, and waited.

"What shall you do, Nell, if Dad doesn't come back to-night?" asked David, stopping in his work of carving a tiny little sled out of wood. "You'll have to do something, shan't you?"