Two on the Trail: A Story of Canada Snows — Reading Companion

I. The Log House II. A Surprise that Brings Suspicion III. Nell Makes up her Mind IV. The Howl Of The Wolf V. "Little Eyes has a Forked Tongue" VI. Green Eyes in the Darkness VII. A Midnight Battle VIII. The Mysterious Camp Fire IX. How the Great Bull Fled for his Life X. The Camp on the Wolf’s Tooth Rocks XI. The Hunters XII. The Flight Continues XIII. A Race For Life XIV. Rifle Shots XV. In which the Ice Goes out, and the Trail Leads Home

"Do you suppose anything has happened to him?" asked the boy; "do you, Nell?"

He had been asking that question a great many times a day for a good many days. Every time he asked it his sister said, "Oh no, of course not," and set about any sort of work to prove she was not thinking anxious thoughts. At last, however, her answer was rather slower in coming, and on this particular occasion no answer came till David touched her arm.

"Do you, Nell?" he urged.

"I don’t know. I shouldn’t think so," she said, but instead of getting busy she sat still and stared at the red-hot stove, her strong hard hands clasped round her knees, and a frown on her forehead--actually doing nothing at all but just think!

This state of things was surprising enough to make "Da," as she called her young brother, more persistent than ever. He was a big, strong, square-shouldered boy of twelve, or thereabouts, and his sister was to him very much what the Captain of the First Eleven might be to a boy in an English school. She was wonderful. She could do anything and everything that he understood and that came into his life, as well--better than anyone he knew. Besides the jobs that men left over--in his experience--and which Nell did as cleverly as the mother who had died about five years before.

Da had entire confidence in her, and who shall say he had not a right to, considering all that he saw and knew about her!

She was fifteen; a head and shoulders taller than himself, and apparently as strong as their father. Her dark red hair was short as his own. That is to say, as short as hair can be where people have no shops and do their own hair-cutting. Her eyes were greenish grey and sharp as the keen, still eyes of the grey lynx that got trapped once in a way in the snares set for mink and martens.

David admired her hair and eyes with all his heart, chiefly because she was the only member of their small family like that--he and his father having darkish eyes and hair. Nell was supposed to have taken after a Scottish ancestress, with a vigorous character, not after the fair little mother with yellow hair and blue eyes; and when people start off like that in an independent manner they usually take a line of their own all through.

In fact, Nell Lindsay was a girl to be trusted; dependable and clever, which was a very good thing, because she needed every bit of it in the present crisis.

She and her young brother were alone in the log house--or shack--more than a hundred miles from any settlement. The two nearest were Abbitibbi House on the lake, away to the eastward, and Brunswick House, north on Moose River. Possibly the distance was equal, and Nell calculated it at a hundred and fifty miles either way.

That is nothing much in a country of railways, or even of good roads, but it is a long way over trackless waste, pathless forest, and snow--without guide, without help from human company.

When Nell did not answer David’s persistent questions any longer, it was because she was thinking about the one hundred and fifty miles--and more--that lay between the shack and friends. It was friends she wanted. There were men nearer than that, but Nell was not sure they were friends, and therein lay the whole trouble, you see.

Over all that wilderness of forest and waste, river and lake, there lived trappers who had marked out certain districts as their own particular trapping grounds. Some were Indians, some white men who had taken up this life for the freedom and profit of making money by selling pelts--that is skins--to the traders who bought them up for the big Companies.

It was an understood thing that the trappers did not poach on each other’s grounds. If they tried they ran the risk of being shot by the rightful owner. They were rough men, and followed rough laws of their own making.