Steele came up to the Hudson's Bay Company's post at Lac Bain on the seventh day after the big storm, and Breed, the factor, confided two important bits of information to him while he was thawing out before the big box-stove in the company's deserted and supply-stripped store. The first was that a certain Colonel Becker and his wife had left Fort Churchill, on Hudson's Bay, to make a visit at Lac Bain; the second, that Buck Nome had gone westward a week before and had not returned. Breed was worried, not over Nome's prolonged absence, but over the anticipated arrival of the other two. According to the letter which had come to him from the Churchill factor. Colonel Becker and his wife had come over on the last supply ship from London, and the colonel was a high official in the company's service. Also, he was an old gentleman. Ostensibly he had no business at Lac Bain, but was merely on a vacation, and wished to see a bit of real life in the wilderness.
Breed's grizzled face was miserable.
“Why don't they send 'em down to York Factory or Nelson House?” he demanded of Steele. “They've got duck feathers, three women, and a civilized factor at the Nelson, and there ain't any of 'em here—not even a woman!”
Steele shrugged his shoulders as Breed mentioned the three women at Nelson.
“There are only two women there now,” he replied. “Since a certain Bucky Nome passed that way, one of them has gone into the South.”
“Well, two, then,” said Breed, who had not caught the flash of fire in the other's eyes. “But I tell you there ain't a one here, Steele, not even an Indian—and that dirty Cree, Jack, is doing the cooking. Blessed Saints, I caught him mixing biscuit dough in the wash basin the other day, and I've been eating those biscuits ever since our people went out to their traplines! There's you, and Nome, two Crees, a 'half' and myself—and that's every soul there'll be at Lac Bain until the mid-winter run of fur. Now, what in Heaven's name is the poor old Mrs. Colonel going to do?”
“Got a bed for her?”
“A bunk—hard as nails!”
“Good grub?”
“Rotten!” groaned the factor. “Every trapper's son of them took out big supplies this fall and we're stripped. Beans, flour, sugar'n'prunes—and caribou until I feel like turning inside out every time I smell it. I'd give a month's commission for a pound of pork. Look here! If this letter ain't 'quality' you can cut me into jiggers. Bet the Mrs. Colonel wrote it for her hubby.”