The man glanced uneasily about him. His pale blue eyes were troubled as he surveyed the shelves laden with gaudy trading truck, and finally came to rest on the small pile of furs baled behind the counter ready for the storeroom. He understood his position well enough. He held it by results. The Fur Valley Trading Company was no philanthropic institution. If Fort Cupar showed no profit then Fort Cupar, so far as their enterprise was concerned, would be closed down.
He was worried. He knew that a time was coming in the comparatively near future when Hesther would need all the comfort and ease that he could afford her. If the Company closed down as it had been threatening him, it would, he felt, be something in the nature of a tragedy to them.
The woman smiled round into his somewhat fat face.
“Don’t you feel sore, Jim,” she said in her cheerful inspiriting way. “Maybe the Good God hands us folk out our trials, but I guess He’s mighty good in passing us compensations. Our compensation’s coming along, boy. An’ I’m looking forward to that time so I don’t hardly know how to wait for it.”
Jim’s blue eyes wavered before the steadfast encouragement in his wife’s confident, slightly self-conscious smile.
“Yes,” he said, and turned away again to the inadequate pile of furs that troubled him.
Nature had been less than kind to Jim McLeod. His body was ungainly with fat for all his youth. His face was puffy and almost gross, which the habit of clean shaving left painfully evident. In reality the man was keen and purposeful. He was kindly and intensely honest. His one serious weakness, the thing that had driven him to join up with the hard life of the northern adventurers was an unfortunate and wholly irresistible addiction to alcohol. In civilization he had failed utterly for that reason alone, and so, with his young wife, he had fled from temptation whither he hoped and believed his curse would be unable to follow him.
“You see, Jim,” Hesther went on reassuringly, “if they close us down, what then? I guess we’ll be only little worse off. They’ve got to see us down to our home town, and we can try again. We—”
The man interrupted her with a quick shake of the head.
“I don’t quit this north country,” he said definitely. “Ther’s things here if we can only hit ’em. And besides it’s my only chance. An’, Hes, it’s your only chance—with me. You know what I mean, dear.” He nodded. “Sure you do, gal. It means drink an’ hell—down there. It means—”