Small things, as Father Roland had frequently said, decide great events.  The next morning came with a glorious sun; the world again was white and wonderful, and David found swift answers to the questions he had asked himself a few hours before.  Each day thereafter the sun was warmer, and with its increasing promise of the final “break-up” and slush snows, Upso-Gee’s taciturnity and anxiety grew apace.  He was little more talkative than the painted devil chaser on the blackened canvas of his tepee, but he gave David to understand that he would have a hard time getting back with his dogs and sledge from Fond du Lac if the thaw came earlier than he had anticipated.  David marvelled at the old warrior’s endurance, and especially when they crossed the forty miles of ice on Wollaston Lake between dawn and darkness.  At high noon the snow was beginning to soften on the sunny slopes even then, and by the time they reached the Porcupine, Snow Fox was chanting his despairing prayer nightly before that grinning thing on his tepee.  “Swas-tao (the thaw) she kam dam’ queek,” he said to David, grimacing his old face to express other things which he could not say in English.  And it did.  Four days later, when they reached Fond du Lac, there was water underfoot in places, and Upso-Gee turned back on the home trail within an hour.

This was in April, and the Post reminded David of a great hive to which the forest people were swarming like treasure-laden bees.  On the last snow they were coming in with their furs from a hundred trap-lines.  Luck was with David.  On the first day Baree fought with a huge malemute and almost killed it, and David, in separating the dogs, was slightly bitten by the malemute.  A friendship sprang up instantly between the two masters.  Bouvais was a Frenchman from Horseshoe Bay, fifty miles from Fort Chippewyan, and a hundred and fifty straight west of Fond du Lac.  He was a fox hunter.  “I bring my furs over here, m’sieu,” he explained, “because I had a fight with the factor at Fort Chippewyan and broke out two of his teeth,” which was sufficient explanation.  He was delighted when he learned that David wanted to go west.  They started two days later with a sledge heavily laden with supplies.  The runners sank deep in the growing slush, but under them was always the thick ice of Lake Athabasca, and going was not bad, except that David’s feet were always wet.  He was surprised that he did not take a “cold.”  “A cold—­what is that?” asked Bouvais, who had lived along the Barrens all his life.  David described a typical case of sniffles, with running at eyes and nose, and Bouvais laughed.  “The only cold we have up here is when the lungs get touched by frost,” he said, “and then you die—­the following spring.  Always then.  The lungs slough away.”  And then he asked:  “Why are you going west?”

David found himself face to face with the question, and had to answer.  “Just to toughen up a bit,” he replied.  “Wandering.  Nothing else to do.”  And after all, he thought later, wasn’t that pretty near the truth?  He tried to convince himself that it was.  But his hand touched the picture of the Girl, in his breast pocket.  He seemed to feel her throbbing against it.  A preposterous imagination!  But it was pleasing.  It warmed his blood.