CHAPTER II
"WE ALL EXERT OUR PULL"
Grey Wolf Landing ran its one street along the river-edge; a ragged, half-mile street, patched with cotton-wood and poplar clumps and split into sections by the vaguer trails that slid back from it into the forest. One end of the street was flanked by the frame-built Church of England; the other end by the Roman Catholic chapel, and in between lay the reason of Grey Wolf—the story of Fur; of the trapper; of all the big and little four-footed animals that die yearly in the great North-West in order that men may live.
Above the small Hudson Bay Store set sheer to the loose plank side-walk the flag of the red cross and the caribou rampant blew out from the staff as it had blown across all the trackless North-West these two hundred and fifty years past. The sun drew the smell of hot leather and dust and groceries out from its gaping door; mixed it with the smells found in the holes and broken corduroy of the street, and let the idle wind take it forward; past the barracks of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, standing back from their white-washed pickets; past Revillon's Store and the little log-shack where Moore and Holland did their trading, and flung it through the windows over the counter and bottles of Grange's Hotel on a corner lot. Across the street the low bank dipped short to the river, where it breasted big to the Lake. Beyond the river the sword of the frost had touched the forest, so that the trees were yielding up their lives in dripping blood-gouts that turned russet as they dried and fell, leaving the grey limbs gaunt and naked in their yearly death.
The thrill of vigorous, virile life was on Grey Wolf; humming with the soft under-beat of moccasined feet along the planking; ripped through and through with blasts of
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