Sometimes the father never comes back, and then the wilderness carries in its heart the secret of his end.  Then, oh, those hours of happy expectancy that become days of grave anxiety and finally weeks of black despair!  Such a case happened once when I was in Labrador.  Later they found the young trapper’s body where the man had perished, seventy miles from his home.

As I have said, the life of the trapper is filled with adventure.  Many a narrow escape he has, but he never loses his grit.  He cannot afford to.  Gilbert Blake was one of four trappers that rescued me several years ago, when I had been on short rations in the wilderness for several weeks, and without food for two weeks.  I had eaten my moccasins, my feet were frozen and I was so weak I could not walk.  Gilbert and I have been friends since then and we later traveled the wilderness together.  Gilbert has no trapping partner.  His “path” is a hundred miles inland from his home.  All winter, with no other companion than a little dog, he works alone in that lonely wilderness.

One winter game was scarce, and Gilbert’s provisions were practically exhausted when he set out to strike up his traps preparatory to his visit home in March.  He was several miles from his tilt when suddenly one of his snowshoes broke beyond repair.  He could not move a step without snowshoes, for the snow lay ten feet deep.  He had no skin with him with which to net another snowshoe, even if he were to make the frame; and he had nothing to eat.

A Labrador blizzard came on, and Gilbert for three days was held prisoner in his tent.  He spent his time trying to make a serviceable snowshoe with netting woven from parts of his clothing torn into strips.  When at last the storm ended and he struck his tent he was famished.

Packing his things on his toboggan he set out for the tilt, but had gone only a short distance when the improvised snowshoe broke.  He made repeated efforts to mend it, but always it broke after a few steps forward.  He was in a desperate situation.

He had now been nearly three days without eating.  He was still several miles from the tilt where he had a scant supply that had been reserved for his journey home.  To proceed to the tilt was obviously impossible, and he could only perish by remaining where he was.

Utterly exhausted after a fruitless effort to flounder forward, he sat down upon his flatsled, and looked out over the silent snow waste.  Weakened with hunger, it seemed to him that he had reached the end of his endurance.  So far as he knew there was not another human being within a hundred miles of where he sat, and he had no expectation or slightest hope of any one coming to his assistance.  “I was scrammed,” said he, which meant, in our vernacular, he was “all in.”