And it was a wonderful world--a world of vast silence, empty of everything but the creatures of the wild.

The nearest Hudson's Bay post was a hundred miles away, and the first town of civilization was a straight three hundred to the south.

Two years before, Tusoo, the Cree trapper, had called this his domain.

It had come down to him, as was the law of the forests, through generations of forefathers.

But Tusoo had been the last of his worn-out family; he had died of smallpox, and his wife and his children had died with him.