He descended the ridge, walked rapidly over the hard crust of the snow across the Saskatchewan, and assured himself that he felt considerably easier when the lights of Prince Albert gleamed a few hundred yards ahead of him.
Jack Howland was a Chicago man, which means that he was a hustler, and not overburdened with sentiment. For fifteen of his thirty-one years he had been hustling. Since he could easily remember, he had possessed to a large measure but one ambition and one hope. With a persistence which had left him peculiarly a stranger to the more frivolous and human sides of life he had worked toward the achievement of this ambition, and to-night, because that achievement was very near at hand, he was happy. He had never been happier. There flashed across his mental vision a swiftly moving picture of the fight he had made for success. It had been a magnificent fight. Without vanity he was proud of it, for fate had handicapped him at the beginning, and still he had won out. He saw himself again the homeless little farmer boy setting out from his Illinois village to take up life in a great city; as though it had all happened but yesterday he remembered how for days and weeks he had nearly starved, how he had sold papers at first, and then, by lucky chance, became errand boy in a big drafting establishment. It was there that the ambition was born in him. He saw great engineers come and go--men who were greater than presidents to him, and who sought out the ends of the earth in the following of their vocation. He made a slave of himself in the nurturing and strengthening of his ambition to become one of them--to be a builder of railroads and bridges, a tunneler of mountains, a creator of new things in new lands. His slavery had not lessened as his years increased. Voluntarily he had kept himself in bondage, fighting ceaselessly the obstacles in his way, triumphing over his handicaps as few other men had triumphed, rising, slowly, steadily, resistlessly, until now--. He flung back his head and the pulse of his heart quickened as he heard again the words of Van Horn, president of the greatest engineering company on the continent.
"Howland, we've decided to put you in charge Of the building of the Hudson Bay Railroad. It's one of the wildest jobs we've ever had, and Gregson and Thorne don't seem to catch on. They're bridge builders and not wilderness men. We've got to lay a single line of steel through three hundred miles of the wildest country in North America, and from this hour your motto is 'Do it or bust!' You can report at Le Pas as soon as you get your traps together."
Those words had broken the slavedom for Howland. He had been fighting for an opportunity, and now that the opportunity had come he was sure that he would succeed. Swiftly, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, he walked down the one main street of Prince Albert, puffing out odorous clouds of smoke from his cigar, every fiber in him tingling with the new joy that had come into his life. Another night would see him in Le Pas, the little outpost sixty miles farther east on the Saskatchewan. Then a hundred miles by dog-sledge and he would be in the big wilderness camp where three hundred men were already at work clearing a way to the great bay to the north. What a glorious achievement that road would be! It would remain for all time as a cenotaph to his ability, his courage and indomitable persistence.
It was past nine o'clock when Howland entered the little old Windsor Hotel. The big room, through the windows of which he could look out on the street and across the frozen Saskatchewan, was almost empty. The clerk had locked his cigar-case and had gone to bed. In one corner, partly shrouded in gloom, sat a half-breed trapper who had come in that day from the Lac la Ronge country, and at his feet crouched one of his wolfish sledge-dogs. Both were wide-awake and stared curiously at Howland as he came in. In front of the two large windows sat half a dozen men, as silent as the half-breed, clad in moccasins and thick caribou skin coats. One of them was the factor from a Hudson Bay post at Lac Bain who had not been down to the edge of civilization for three years; the others, including two Crees and a Chippewayan, were hunters and Post men who had driven in their furs from a hundred miles to the north.
For a moment Howland paused in the middle of the room and looked about him. Ordinarily he would have liked this quiet, and would have gone to one of the two rude tables to write a letter or work out a problem of some sort, for he always carried a pocketful of problems about with him. His fifteen years of study and unceasing slavery to his ambition had made him naturally as taciturn as these grim men of the North, who were born to silence. But to-night there had come a change over him. He wanted to talk. He wanted to ask questions. He longed for human companionship, for some kind of mental exhilaration beyond that furnished by his own thoughts. Feeling in his pocket for a cigar he seated himself before one of the windows and proffered it to the factor from Lac Bain.
"You smoke?" he asked companionably.
"I was born in a wigwam," said the factor slowly, taking the cigar. "Thank you."
"Deuced polite for a man who hasn't seen civilization for three years," thought Howland, seating himself comfortably, with his feet on the window-sill. Aloud he said, "The clerk tells me you are from Lac Bain. That's a good distance north, isn't it?"
"Four hundred miles," replied the factor with quiet terseness. "We're on the edge of the Barren Lands."
"Whew!" Howland shrugged his shoulders. Then he volunteered, "I'm going north myself to-morrow."
"Post man?"
"No; engineer. I'm putting through the Hudson Bay Railroad."
He spoke the words quite clearly and as they fell from his lips the half-breed, partly concealed in the gloom behind him, straightened with the alert quickness of a cat. He leaned forward eagerly, his black eyes gleaming, and then rose softly from his seat. His moccasined feet made no sound as he came up behind Howland. It was the big huskie who first gave a sign of his presence. For a moment the upturned eyes of the young engineer met those of the half-breed. That look gave Howland a glimpse of a face which he could never forget--a thin, dark, sensitive face framed in shining, jet-black hair, and a pair of eyes that were the most beautiful he had ever seen in a man. Sometimes a look decides great friendship or bitter hatred between men. And something, nameless, unaccountable, passed between these two. Not until the half-breed had turned and was walking swiftly away did Howland realize that he wanted to speak to him, to grip him by the hand, to know him by name. He watched the slender form of the Northerner, as lithe and as graceful in its movement as a wild thing of the forests, until it passed from the door out into the night.
"Who was that?" he asked, turning to the factor.
"His name is Croisset. He comes from the Wholdaia country, beyond Lac la Ronge."
"French?"
"Half French, half Cree."
The factor resumed his steady gaze out into the white distance of the night, and Howland gave up his effort at conversation. After a little his companion shoved back his chair and bade him good night. The Crees and Chippewayan followed him, and a few minutes later the two white hunters left the engineer alone before the windows.
"Mighty funny people," he said half aloud. "Wonder if they ever talk!"
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, his face resting in his hands, and stared to catch a sign of moving life outside. In him there was no desire for sleep. Often he had called himself a night-bird, but seldom had he been more wakeful than on this night. The elation of his triumph, of his success, had not yet worn itself down to a normal and reasoning satisfaction, and his chief longing was for the day, and the day after that, and the next day, when he would take the place of Gregson and Thorne. Every muscle in his body was vibrant in its desire for action. He looked at his watch. It was only ten o'clock. Since supper he had smoked almost ceaselessly. Now he lighted another cigar and stood up close to one of the windows.
Faintly he caught the sound of a step on the board walk outside. It was a light, quick step, and for an instant it hesitated, just out of his vision. Then it approached, and suddenly the figure of a woman stopped in front
