Carrigan had thought of these things that hour ago, as he sat at the edge of the first of the Three Rivers, the great Athabasca.  From down the other two, the Slave and the Mackenzie, the fur fleets of the unmapped country had been toiling since the first breakups of ice.  Steadily, week after week, the north had been emptying itself of its picturesque tide of life and voice, of muscle and brawn, of laughter and song—­and wealth.  Through, long months of deep winter, in ten thousand shacks and tepees and cabins, the story of this June had been written as fate had written it each winter for a hundred years or more.  A story of the triumph of the fittest.  A story of tears, of happiness here and there, of hunger and plenty, of new life and quick death; a story of strong men and strong women, living in the faith of their forefathers, with the best blood of old England and France still surviving in their veins.

Through those same months of winter, the great captains of trade in the city of Edmonton had been preparing for the coming of the river brigades.  The hundred and fifty miles of trail between that last city outpost of civilization and Athabasca Landing, the door that opened into the North, were packed hard by team and dog-sledge and packer bringing up the freight that for another year was to last the forest people of the Three River country—­a domain reaching from the Landing to the Arctic Ocean.  In competition fought the drivers of Revillon Brothers and Hudson’s Bay, of free trader and independent adventurer.  Freight that grew more precious with each mile it advanced must reach the beginning of the waterway.  It started with the early snows.  The tide was at full by midwinter.  In temperature that nipped men’s lungs it did not cease.  There was no let-up in the whip-hands of the masters of trade at Edmonton, Winnipeg, Montreal, and London across the sea.  It was not a work of philanthropy.  These men cared not whether Jean and Jacqueline and Pierre and Marie were well-fed or hungry, whether they lived or died, so far as humanity was concerned.  But Paris, Vienna, London, and the great capitals of the earth must have their furs—­and unless that freight went north, there would be no velvety offerings for the white shoulders of the world.  Christmas windows two years hence would be bare.  A feminine wail of grief would rise to the skies.  For woman must have her furs, and in return for those furs Jean and Jacqueline and Pierre and Marie must have their freight.  So the pendulum swung, as it had swung for a century or two, touching, on the one side, luxury, warmth, wealth, and beauty; on the other, cold and hardship, deep snows and open skies—­with that precious freight the thing between.