The last to wring the voyageur's hand was Nicholson, who said:
"Take good care of yourself, Joe. Half-Way-House can't afford to lose its best hunter. If you enlist we'll expect to hear from you by the spring canoe or the winter packet at least. Good-bye and good luck!"
"Bo'-jo', Meester Nicholson. I sen' you news from de fight," said Lecroix, and with a parting wave of his hand he cracked his caribou-hide whip and was off on the trail to the southern posts and far-off Flanders.
Day by day, as he followed the Singing Rapids trail to the Height-of-Land, now leading his team to pack down the new drift, now riding where the wind had brushed bare the icy shell of streams or beaten the snow hard on the lakes, the Cree came to look with changed eyes on the bleak winter hills and silent forests of his native land. It was a far journey he was entering on, and, as he hurried south behind his eager huskies, he realized that there might be no return down these valleys for the dog-team of Joe Lecroix. He was going he knew not where, to fight the enemies of the Great Father—the Great Father, of whom his children of the forests had but the vaguest ideas from post-trader and missionary. In the two days he spent at Half-Way-House he had learned what the factor had gathered from newspapers and letters brought by the Christmas-mail team, and it had been sufficient for Joe Lecroix.
The fur trade stagnant and no one depending on
