Part 5 (2/2)

Because he owns them, like he owns the Indians! That's why!

”Just stop and consider what is ahead of a dollar-a-day policeman. When his five-year term of enlistment has expired, he has his choice of enlisting for another term, or making his living some other way. At the end of the five years he has learned to hate the service with a hatred that is soul-searing. It is the hardest, strictest, most exacting, and most ill-paid service in the world; and the five years of the man's enlistment have practically rendered him unfit for earning a living.

”He has lived in the wild country. He knows the wild country. And civilization, with its rapid advance, has left him five years behind the times. Our ex-man of the Mounted is fit for only the commonest labour.

And, because there are almost no employers in the North, he cannot turn his knowledge of the wilds to profitable account, unless he turns smuggler, whiskey-runner, or fur-poisoner. The men know this.

Therefore, when an officer whose patrol takes him into the far 'back blocks' is approached by a man like MacNair, with his pockets bulging with gold, what report goes down to Regina, and on to Ottawa?

”Yes, Miss Elliston, in the Northland there is law. But the law is a fundamental law--the primitive law of savage might. The strong devour the weak. Only the fit survive--survive to be ruled, to be trampled, to be _owned_ by the strongest. And the law is the measure of might!

Primal instincts--pristine pa.s.sions--primordial brutishness permeate the whole North--rule it.

”The wolf and savage _carcajo_ drag down the hunger-weakened caribou and the deer, and rip the warm, red flesh from their bones before their eyes have glazed. And, in turn, the wolf and the _carcajo_, the unoffending beaver and musquash, the mink, the fisher, the fox, and the otter are trapped by savage man and the pelts ripped from their twitching bodies while life and sensibility remain. They are harder to skin when cold.

And with the thermometer at forty or sixty below zero, the little bodies chill almost instantly if mercifully killed--therefore, they are not killed, but flayed alive and their bleeding bodies tossed upon the snow.

They die quickly--then. But--they have lived through the skinning! And that is the North!”

Chloe Elliston shuddered and drew away in horror. ”Is--is this possible?” she faltered. ”Do they----”

”They do. The fur business is not a pretty business, Miss Elliston. But neither is the North pretty--nor are its inhabitants. But the traffic in fur is inherently the business of the North--and its history is written in blood--the blood and the suffering of thousands of men and millions of animals. But the profits are great. Fas.h.i.+on has decreed that My Lady shall be swathed in fur--therefore, men go mad and die in the barrens, and the quivering red bodies of small animals bleed, and curl up, and stiffen upon the hard crust of the snow! No, the North is not gentle, Miss Elliston----”

”Don't! Don't!” faltered the girl. ”It is all too--too horrible--too sickeningly brutal--too--too unbelievable!” She covered her eyes with her hand.

Lapierre answered, dryly. ”Yes. The North is that way. It has always been so--and it always will----”

Chloe's hand dropped from her eyes and, she faced him in a sudden burst of pa.s.sion. Her sensitive lips quivered and her eyes narrowed to the rapier-blade eyes that were the eyes of Tiger Elliston. She tore the roll of blue-prints to bits and ground them into the mould with the heel of her boot.

”_It will not!_” Her voice cut sharply, and hard. ”What do you know of what the North _will_ be? You know it only as it has been--as it is, perhaps. But, of its future you know nothing. I tell you the North will change! It is a hard land--cruel--elemental--raw! But it is _big_!

And, when it awakens, its very bigness, the virile force and strength of it, will turn against its savagery, its cruelty, its brutishness; and above all other lands it will stand for the protection of the weak and for the right of things to live!”

The quarter-breed gazed into her face with a look of undisguised admiration. ”Ah, Miss Elliston, you are beautiful, now--beautiful always--but, at this moment--radiant--divine--” Chloe seemed not to hear him.

”And that is to be _my_ work--to awaken the North! To bring to its people the comforts--the advantages of civilization!”

”The North is too big for you, Miss Elliston. It is too big for _men_.

Pardon, but it is not a woman's land.”

The girl's eyes flashed. ”Suppose we leave s.e.x out of it, Mr. Lapierre.

They said of my grandfather that 'the harder they fought him, the better he liked 'em,' and that 'he never knew when he was licked.' Maybe that is the reason he never was licked, but lived to carry civilization into a land that was a thousand years deeper in savagery than this land is. And today civilization--education--Christianity exist where seventy-five years ago the chance visitor was tortured first and eaten afterward.”

Lapierre shrugged. ”It is useless to argue. I am in sympathy with your undertaking. I admire your courage, and the high ideals of your mission.

But, permit me to remind you that your grandfather, whoever he was, was _not_ a woman. Also, that here, in the North, Christianity and education have failed to civilize--the educated ones and the converts are worse than the others.”

The girl's eyes darkened and the man noticed the peculiar out-thrust of the chin. He hastened to change the subject.

”I am glad you have abandoned those plans. They were useless. May I now proceed with the building?”

Chloe smiled. ”Yes,” she answered, ”by all means. But, as this is to be _my_ undertaking, I think I shall have it _my_ way. Build the store first, if you please----”

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