CHAPTER I
NORTH OF “SIXTY”
The sub-Arctic summer was at its height. The swelter of heat was of almost tropical intensity. No wisp of cloud marred the perfect purity of the steely blue sky, and no breath of wind relieved the intemperate scorch of the blazing sun.
The two men on the river bank gave no heed to the oppressive heat. For the moment they seemed concerned with nothing but their ease, and the swarming flies, and the voracious attacks of the mosquitoes from which the smoke of their camp fire did its best to protect them. Down below them, a few yards away, their walrus-hide kyak lay moored to the bank of the river, whose sluggish, oily-moving waters flowed gently northward towards the far-off fields of eternal ice. It was noon, and a rough midday meal had been prepared and disposed of. Now they were smoking away a leisurely hour before resuming their journey.
The younger of the two flung away the end of a cigarette with a movement that was almost violent in its impatience. He turned a pair of narrow black eyes upon his companion, and their sparkle of resentment shone fiercely in sharp contrast against the dusky skin of their setting.
“It’s no use blinding ourselves, sir,” he said, speaking rapidly in the tongue of the whiteman, with only the faintest suspicion of native halting. “It’s here. But we’ve missed it. And another’s found it.”
He was a youthful creature something short of the completion of his second decade. But that which he lacked in years he made up for in the alertness of purpose that looked out of his keen eyes. He was dark-skinned, its hue something between yellow and olive. He had prominent, broad cheek bones like those of all the natives of Canada’s extreme north. Yet his face differed from the general low type of the Eskimo. There was refinement in every detail of it. There was something that suggested a race quite foreign, but curiously akin.
“Marty Le Gros? Yes?”
The older man stirred. He had been lounging full length on the ground so that the smoke of the camp fire rolled heavily across him, and kept him safe from the torment of winged insects. Now he sat up like the other, and crossing his legs tucked his booted feet under him.
He was older than his companion by more than twenty years. But the likeness between them was profound. He, too, was dusky. He, too, had the broad, high cheek bones. He was of similar stature, short and broad. Then, too, his hair was black and cut short like the other’s, so short, indeed, that it bristled crisply over the crown of his bare head with the effect of a wire brush. He, too, was clad in the rough buckskin of the trail with no detail that could have distinguished him from the native. The only difference between the two was in age, and the colour of their eyes. The older man’s eyes were a sheer anachronism. They were a curious gleaming yellow, whose tawny depths shone with a subtle reflection of the brilliant sunshine.