The fur fort was a relic of ancient days, when the old-time traders of the North sent their legions of pelt hunters from the far limits of the northern ice-world to the sunny western slopes of the great American continent. It was at such a place as this, hemmed in amidst the foot-hills, that they established their factor and his handful of armed men; lonely sentries at the gates of the mountain world, to levy an exorbitant tax upon the harvest of furs within.
Here, within the ponderous stockade, now fallen into sore decay, behind iron-bound doors secured by mighty wooden locks, and barred with balks of timber, sheltered beneath the frowning muzzles of half a dozen futile carronades, they reveled in obscene orgies and committed their barbaric atrocities under the name of Justice and Commerce. Here they amassed wealth for the parent companies in distant lands, and ruthlessly despoiled the wild of its furry denizens.
These were the pioneers, sturdy savages little better than the red man himself, little better in their lives than the creatures upon which they preyed. But they were for the most part men, vigorous, dauntless men who not only made history, but prepared the way for those who were to come after, leaving them a heritage of unsurpassable magnificence.
Now, this old-time relic afforded a shelter for two lonely men, whose only emulation of their predecessors was in the craft that was theirs. In all else there remained nothing in common, unless it were that common asset of all pioneers, a sturdy courage. They certainly lacked nothing of this. But whereas the courage of their predecessors, judging them by all historical records, in quality belonged largely to the more brutal side of life, these men had no such inspiration. Their calling was something in the nature of a passionate craving for the exercise of wits and instincts in a hard field where the creatures of the wild meet the human upon almost equal terms.
Isolation was nothing new to these men. The remotenesses of the back world had been their life for years. They understood its every mood, and met them with nerves in perfect tune. The mountains filled their whole outlook. They desired nothing better, nothing more.
Yet it seemed strange that this should be. For the Padre had not always lived beyond the fringes of civilization. He was a man of education, a man of thought and even culture. These things must have been obvious to the most casual observer. In Buck's case it was easier to understand. He had known no other life than this. And yet he, too, might well have been expected to look askance at a future lost to all those things which he knew to lay beyond. Was he not at the threshold of life? Were not his veins thrilling with the rich, red tide of youth? Were not all those instincts which go to make up the sum of young human life as much a part of him as of those others who haunted the banks of Yellow Creek? The whole scheme was surely unusual. The Padre's instinct was to roam deeper and deeper into the wild, and Buck, offered his release from its wondrous thrall, had refused it.