It was the Flying-Up Moon--deep and slumbering midsummer--in all the land of Keewatin.

From Hudson Bay to the Athabasca and from the Hight of Land to the edge of the Great Barrens, forest, plain, and swamp lay in peace and forgetfulness under the sun-glowing days and the star-filled nights of the August MUKOO-SAWIN.

It was the breeding moon, the growing moon, the moon when all wild life came into its own once more.

For the trails of this wilderness world--so vast that it reached a thousand miles east and west and as far north and south--were empty of human life.

At the Hudson Bay Company's posts--scattered here and there over the illimitable domain of fang and claw--had gathered the thousands of hunters and trappers, with their wives and children, to sleep and gossip and play through the few weeks of warmth and plenty until the strife and tragedy of another winter began.