One day they waxed
mutinous, and being vilely cursed by Jacques Baptiste, turned, as
worms sometimes will. But the half-breed thrashed the twain, and
sent them, bruised and bleeding, about their work. It was the
first time either had been manhandled.
Abandoning their river craft at the headwaters of the Little
Peel, they consumed the rest of the summer in the great portage
over the Mackenzie watershed to the West Rat. This little stream
fed the Porcupine, which in turn joined the Yukon where that
mighty highway of the North countermarches on the Arctic Circle.
But they had lost in the race with winter, and one day they tied
their rafts to the thick eddy-ice and hurried their goods ashore.
That night the river jammed and broke several times; the
following morning it had fallen asleep for good. 'We can't be
more'n four hundred miles from the Yukon,' concluded Sloper,
multiplying his thumb nails by the scale of the map. The council,
in which the two Incapables had whined to excellent disadvantage,
was drawing to a close.
'Hudson Bay Post, long time ago. No use um now.' Jacques
Baptiste's father had made the trip for the Fur Company in the
old days, incidentally marking the trail with a couple of frozen
toes.
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