Burned Bridges

Back from the beach, in a clearing hacked out of the woods, stood a

score or more of low cabins flanking a building more ambitious in scope

and structure. More than a century had passed since the first foundation

logs were laid in the name of the Hudson's Bay Company, to the Company's

glory and profit. It had been a fort then, in all that the name implies

throughout the fur country. It had boasted a stockade, a brass cannon

which commanded the great gates that swung open to friendly strangers

and were closed sharply to potential foes. But the last remnant of

Pachugan's glory had gone glimmering down the corridors of time. The

Company was still as strong, stronger even in power more sure and subtle

than ever lay in armed retainers and absolute monopoly. But Fort

Pachugan had become a mere collecting station for the lesser furs, a

distributing center for trade goods to native trappers. There were no

more hostile tribes. The Company no longer dealt out the high justice,

the middle, and the low. The stockade and the brass cannon were

traditions. Pachugan sprawled on the bank of the lake, open to all

comers, a dimming landmark of the old days.

What folk were out of doors bent their eyes upon the canoe. The factor

himself rose from his seat on the porch and came down to have speech

with them. Thompson, recognizing authority, made known his name and his

mission. The burly Scot shook hands with him. They walked away together,

up to the factor's house. On the threshold the Reverend Wesley paused

for a backward look, drew the crumpled linen of his handkerchief across

his moist brow, and then disappeared within. Mike Breyette and Donald

MacDonald looked at each other expressively. Their swarthy faces slowly

expanded in a broad grin.

In the North, what with the crisp autumn, the long winter, and that

bleak, uncertain period which is neither winter nor spring, summer--as

we know it in softer lands--has but a brief span to endure. But Nature

there as elsewhere works out a balance, adheres to a certain law of

proportion. What Northern summers lack in length is compensated by

intensity. When the spring floods have passed and the warm rains follow

through lengthening days of sun, grass and flowers arise with magic

swiftness from a wonderfully fertile soil. Trees bud and leaf; berries

form hard on the blossoming. Overnight, as it were, the woods and

meadows, the river flats and the higher rolling country, become

transformed. And when August passes in a welter of flies and heat and

thunderstorms, the North is ready once more for the frosty segment of

its seasonal round. July and August are hot months in the high

latitudes. For six weeks or thereabouts the bottom-lands of the Peace

and the Athabasca can hold their own with the steaming tropics. After

that--well, this has to do in part with "after that." For it was in late

July when Wesley Thompson touched at Fort Pachugan, a Bible in his

pocket, a few hundred pounds of supplies in Mike Breyette's canoe,

certain aspirations of spiritual labor in his head, and little other

equipment to guide and succor him in that huge, scantily peopled

territory which his superiors had chosen as the field for his labors.