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.