"How far is it from here?" asked the boy.
"Not over a hundred an' fifty miles at the outside, an' if you'll wait around a couple of days, there'll be some of the Bear Lake Indians in with some fish from the Fisheries. They're due now. You can hire them for guides. They'll be bringin' down a couple of tons of fish, so they'll have plenty sled room so you can make it in one trip."
And so it was decided that Connie and 'Merican Joe should winter somewhere on the south shore of Great Bear Lake, and for a certain band of Indians that had established their camp upon the river that flows from Lake Ste. Therese into the extreme point of McVicker Bay, it was well they did.
The Bear Lake Indians appeared the following day, delivered their fish at the post, and Connie employed two of them with their dog teams to make the trip. The journey was uneventful enough, with only one storm to break the monotony of steady trailing with the thermometer at forty and even fifty below—for the strong cold had settled upon the Northland in earnest.
Upon the sixth day 'Merican Joe halted the outfit upon the shore of a little lake which lay some five miles from the south shore of Keith Bay. "Build camp here," he said, indicating a low knoll covered with a dense growth of spruce. Connie paid off the guides with an order on the Hudson's Bay Company, and hardly had they disappeared before he and 'Merican Joe were busy clearing away the snow and setting up the tent that was to serve as temporary quarters until the tiny cabin that would be their winter home could be completed.
The extra sled provided by the Indians, and the fact that they were to go only a comparatively short distance from the post, had induced Connie to add to his outfit a few conveniences that would have been entirely out of the question had he insisted in pushing on to the Coppermine. There was a real sheet iron stove with several lengths of pipe, a double window—small to be sure, but provided with panes of glass—and enough planking for a small sized door and door frame. Although the snow all about them showed innumerable tracks of the fur bearers, the two paid no attention to them until the cabin stood finished in its tiny clearing. And a snug little cabin it was, with its walls banked high with snow, its chinks all sealed with water-soaked snow that froze hard the moment it was in place, and its roof of small logs completely covered with a thick layer of the same wind-proof covering.
On the morning following the completion of the cabin Connie and 'Merican Joe ate their breakfast by candlelight. Connie glanced toward the pile of steel traps of assorted sizes that lay in the corner. "We'll be setting them today, Joe. The fox tracks are thick all along the lake, and yesterday I saw where a big lynx had prowled along the edge of that windfall across the coulee."
'Merican Joe smiled. "Firs' we got to git de bait. Dat ain' no good we set de trap wit'out no bait."
"What kind of bait? And where do we get it?" asked the boy.
"Mos' any kin'—rabbit, bird, caribou, moose. Today we set 'bout wan hondre snare for de rabbit. We tak' de leetle gun 'long, mebbe-so we git de shot at de ptarmigan."