stiff.  Now he was warm and comfortable.  So he did not move.  And Durant exulted in his cleverness.  He did not travel far in the night, but stopped four or five miles from Nanette’s cabin, and built a fire.  Over this he boiled coffee and roasted meat.  He allowed the meat to roast slowly, turning it round and round on a wooden spit, so that the aroma of it grew thick and inviting in the air.  He had fastened his two sledge dogs fifty paces away, but the sledge was close to the fire, and he watched the effect on Miki of the roasting meat.  Since the days of his puppyhood with Challoner a smell like that which came from the meat had not filled Miki’s nostrils, and at last Durant saw him lick his chops and heard the click of his teeth.  He chuckled in his beard.  Still he waited another quarter of an hour.  Then he pulled the meat off the spit, cut it up, and gave a half of it to Miki.  And Miki ate it ravenously.

A clever man was Henri Durant!

CHAPTER NINETEEN

During the last few days in December all trails for ten thousand square miles around led to Post Fort 0’ God.  It was the eve of OOSKE PIPOON—­of the New Year—­the mid-winter carnival time of the people of the wilderness, when from teepees and cabins far and near come the trappers and their families to sell their furs and celebrate for a few days with others of their kind.  To this New Year gathering men, women, and children look forward through long and weary months.  The trapper’s wife has no neighbour.  Her husband’s “line” is a little kingdom inviolate, with no other human life within many miles of it; so for the women the OOSKE PIPOON is a time of rejoicing; for the children it is the “big circus,” and for the men a reward for the labour and hardship of catching their fur.  During these few days old acquaintanceships are renewed and new ones are made.  It is here that the “news” of the trackless wilderness is spread, the news of deaths, of marriages, and of births; of tragic happenings that bring horror and grief and tears, and of others that bring laughter and joy.  For the first and last time in all the seven months’ winter the people of the forests “come to town.”  Indian, halfbreed, “blood,” and white man, join in the holiday without distinction of colour or creed.

This year there was to be a great caribou roast, a huge barbecue, at Fort O’ God, and by the time Henri Durant came within half a dozen miles of the Post the trails from north and south and east and west were beaten hard by the tracks of dogs and men.  That year a hundred sledges came in from the forests, and with them were three hundred men and women and children and half a thousand dogs.