At least that was the gist of what Carrigan had read in McVane’s report.  But he had never associated it with the name of Boulain.  It was of St. Pierre that he had heard stories, St. Pierre and his black pennon with its white bear and fighting wolves.  And so—­it was St. Pierre Boulain!

He closed his eyes and thought of the long winter weeks he had passed at Hay River Post, watching for Fanchet, the mail robber.  It was there he had heard most about this St. Pierre, and yet no one he had talked with had ever seen him; no one knew whether he was old or young, a pigmy or a giant.  Some stories said that he was strong, that he could twist a gun-barrel double in his hands; others said that he was old, very old, so that he never set forth with his brigades that brought down each year a treasure of furs to be exchanged for freight.  And never did a Dog Rib or a Yellowknife open his mouth about KICHEOO KIMOW St. Pierre, the master of their unmapped domains.  In that great country north and west of the Great Slave he remained an enigma and a sphinx.  If he ever came out with his brigades, he did not disclose his identity, so that if one saw a fleet of boats or canoes with the St. Pierre pennon, one had to make his own guess whether St. Pierre himself was there or not.  But these things were known—­that the keenest, quickest, and strongest men in the northland ran the St. Pierre brigades, that they brought out the richest cargoes of furs, and that they carried back with them into the secret fastnesses of their wilderness the greatest cargoes of freight that treasure could buy.  So much the name St. Pierre dragged out of Carrigan’s memory.  It came to him now why the name “Boulain” had pounded so insistently in his brain.  He had seen this pennon with its white bear and fighting wolves only once before, and that had been over a Boulain scow at Chipewyan.  But his memory had lost its grip on that incident while retaining vividly its hold on the stories and rumors of the mystery-man, St. Pierre.

Carrigan pulled himself a little higher on his pillow and with a new interest scanned the cabin.  He had never heard of Boulain women.  Yet here was the proof of their existence and of the greatness that ran in the red blood of their veins.  The history of the great northland, hidden in the dust-dry tomes and guarded documents of the great company, had always been of absorbing interest to him.  He wondered why it was that the outside world knew so little about it and believed so little of what it heard.  A long time ago he had penned an article telling briefly the story of this half of a great continent in which for two hundred years romance and tragedy and strife for mastery had gone on in a way to thrill the hearts of men.  He had told of huge forts with thirty-foot stone bastions, of fierce wars, of great warships that had fired their broadsides in battle in the ice-filled waters of Hudson’s Bay.  He had described the coming into this northern