God's Country—And the Woman

by James Oliver Curwood

"But every seventh year there may be famine. Here in the North it is the varying hare, the rabbit, that feeds the children of the trap-lines and the marten and fox they trap, and every seventh year there comes a mysterious disease. One year there are rabbits in millions, the next there are none. The lynx and the wolf and the fox starve, there are no fur bearers in the traps, the trapper faces the blizzard and the cold to find empty deadfalls day after day, and however skillfully he may hunt there is no game for his gun. What would he do, but starve, if it were not for the fur trader and the post, where there is flour, a little food to help John the Trapper through the winter? The people about us are not thin in the waist. Josephine has made a little oasis of plenty where John the Trapper is safe in good years and bad. That's why I buy fur."

The giant's eyes were flushed with enthusiasm again. He pushed the cigars across the table to Philip, and one of his fists was knotted.

"She wants me to publish a lot of these things," he went on. "She says they are facts which would interest the whole world. Perhaps that is so. Fur is gotten with hardship and danger and suffering. It may be there are not many people who know that up here at the top end of the world there is a country of forest and stream twenty times as large as the State of Ohio, and in which the population per square mile is less than that of the Great African Desert. And it's all because everyone must live off the game. Everything goes back to that. Let something happen, some little thing—a migration of game, a case of measles. The Indians will die if there are not white men near to help them. That's why Josephine makes me buy fur."

He pointed to the wall behind Philip. Over the door through which they had just come hung a huge, old-fashioned flint-lock six feet in length. There was something like the snarl of an animal in John Adare's voice when he spoke again.

"That's the tool of the Northland," he said. "That is the only tool John the Trapper knows, all he can know in a land where even trees are stunted and there are no plows. His clothes and the blankets he weaves of twisted strips of rabbit fur are adapted to the cold, he is a master of the canoe and the most skilful trapper in the world, but in all else he must be looked after like a child. He is still largely one of God's men, this John the Trapper. He hasn't any measurements of value. He doesn't know what the dollar means. He measures his wealth in 'skins,' and when he trades the basis for whatever mental calculations he may make is in the form of lead bullets taken from one tin-pan and transferred to another. He doesn't keep track of figures. He trusts alone to the white man's word, and only those who understand him, who have dealt with him for years, can be trusted not to take advantage of his faith. That's why I buy fur—to give John his chance to live."

Adare laughed, and ran a hand through his shaggy hair as if rousing himself from thought of a relentless struggle. "But this isn't working on my foxes, is it? On second thought I think I shall postpone that until to-morrow, Philip. I have promised Miriam that I will have Metoosin trim my hair and beard before dinner. Shall I send him to you?"

"A hair cut would be a treat," said Philip, rising. He was surprised at the sudden change in the other's mood. But he was not sorry Adare had given him the opportunity to go. He had planned to say other things to Josephine that morning if they had not been interrupted, and he did not believe that she would be long with her mother.

In this, however, he was doomed to disappointment. When he returned to his room he found that Josephine had not forgotten the condition of his wardrobe, and he guessed immediately why she had surprised them all by rising so early. On his bed were spread several changes of shirts and underwear, a pair of new corduroy trousers, a pair of caribou skin leggings, and moccasins. In a box were a dozen linen handkerchiefs and a number of ties for the blue-gray soft shirts Josephine had chosen for him. He was not much ahead of Metoosin, who came in a few minutes later and clipped his hair. When this was done and he had clad himself in his new raiment he looked at himself in the mirror. Josephine had shown splendid judgment. Everything fitted him.

For an hour he listened for footsteps in the hall, and occasionally looked out of the window. He wondered if Josephine had seen the small round hole with its myriad of out-shooting cracks where the bullet had pierced the glass. He had made up his mind that she had not, for no one could mistake it, and she would surely have spoken to him of it. He found that the hole was so high up on the pane that he could draw the curtain over it without shutting out much light. He did this.

Later he went outside, and found that the dogs regarded him with certain signs of friendship. In him was a growing presentiment that something had happened to Jean. He was sure that Croisset had taken up the trail of the man who had shot at him soon after they had separated at the gravesides. He was equally certain that the chase would be short. Jean was quick. Dogs and sledge would be an impediment for the other in the darkness of the night. Before this, hours ago, they must have met. If Jean had come out of that meeting unharmed, it was time for him to be showing up at Adare House. Still greater perturbation filled Philip's mind when he recalled the unpleasant skill of the mysterious forest man's fighting. He had been more than his equal in swiftness and trickery; he was certainly Jean's.