Page:Toilers of the Trails.djvu/23

 "A-hah!" The dazed Cree sighed, thinking of the rich fur pack outside on his sled and the long days he had toiled for it on his trap-lines in distant ice-locked valleys.

"What you geeve now for black fox?"

"Can't give you half last year's price; nobody buys 'em; they've all gone to war. Canada sends soldiers too, to fight for the King, the Great Father, across the Big Water."

"A-hah!" The tall trapper listened in amazement. Then he asked:

"How long dees fight las'?"

"No one knows, Joe. It's the worst war the world has seen and it may last a long time. The Big English Chief says three years."

"Fur no good w'ile de fight las'?"

"No, fur won't be worth much for some time."

"A-hah! " The Cree sighed heavily and went out to look after his dogs.

For two days Joe Lecroix—although a full-blooded Cree, his family had acquired the French name generations before—listened silently to the lamentation of the trappers at Half-Way-House. It was destined to be a sad Christmas indeed for those who had journeyed from their winter camps for the revel that the Great Company annually provides for its children of the snows. And long before the trails went soft in April there would be many a tepee in Rupert Land that had not known flour or tea in moons.

But Joe Lecroix did not trade his black fox and marten skins. While the Crees smoked, mourning