CHAPTER XVI
"THE LAW IS POWERLESS THERE"
"The Indians throughout this region come yearly to Fort Resolution for Treaty, and, having no permanent camps, would not be benefited by a Police Department in the vicinity. The tribes are Yellow Knives and Dog Ribs, and they bear a fairly good reputation and seem passably prosperous. The Esquimaux"
Tempest turned in the big chair where he sat propped with all the pillows which the barracks at Fort Churchill could muster.
"Those dogs are making an awful row," he said.
"They always fight in the first snow. Besides, the moon excites them." Dick drove his pen into the ink again. "Well?" he said. "The Esquimaux are not a very potent factor. I guess they can worry along all right without us.
"So long as they dress by their ancient laws and customs they're better without the white-man element. Yes. Er—The Esquimaux on the Hudson Bay side of Height of Land"
Dick went on writing, and for a while there was no sound in the room but Tempest's quiet voice and the scribble of the pen and the noise of the husky dogs outside the window. The blind was up, and the white square of the moonlit snow showed beyond the black shadows of the buildings. Occasionally a dog shot across it, followed by the flickering ghosts of the mob. Then the square lay naked again, and in the little room where the black stove-pipe ran, oozing warmth, the two men worked on steadily.
It was just the fitting of another little grey unnoticed chip of mosaic into the huge pavement of the Empire which thrusts its length around the world; just a curt telling of the necessary things with all that made it a human record left out. In the Parliament Buildings at
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