"My god and master," Baree's eyes said, as they looked up at him, "I am here." It was as if David had heard the words.

He held out a hand and Baree came to him, his great wolfish body aquiver with joy.

After all, he was not alone.
A short distance from him the Indian who was to take him over to Fond du Lac, on Lake Athabasca, was waiting with his dogs and sledge.

He was a Sarcee, one of the last of an almost extinct tribe, so old that his hair was of a shaggy white, and he was so thin that he looked like a famine-stricken Hindu.

"He has lived so long that no one knows his age," Father Roland had said, "and he is the best trailer between Hudson's Bay and the Peace." His name was Upso-Gee (the Snow Fox), and the Missioner had bargained with him for a hundred dollars to take David from White Porcupine House to Fond du Lac, three hundred miles farther northwest.
He cracked his long caribou-gut whip to remind David that he was ready.
David had said good-bye to the factor and the clerk at the Company store and there was no longer an excuse to detain him.