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 What Company packer carries four bags of flour over the Devil's Portage on the Nottaway without rest? You saw Joe Lecroix do it two summers ago. Has any canoe man in Rupert Land run the Chutes of Death on the Harricanaw and lived? One! That one was Joe Lecroix. You say the white men will not take Joe Lecroix to fight across the Big Water because he has a skin like the red cedar. I will go to their camps and ask them."

The deep chest of the Cree rose and fell rapidly, his face set hard as his small eyes fiercely held Nicholson's gaze.

"It ain't that, Joe. All you say is dead truth, my lad. You're as stout as a moose and the best white-water man I've ever seen. It ain't that you ain't as able a man as travels the north country. It's just that they haven't enlisted Indians and may not intend to. I can't tell, and it's a long journey south, a long trail and a hard one. It would be tough if they wouldn't take you. Eight weeks on the trail with the dogs for nothing. It's safer to stick to the traps, Joe."

"I go and fin' out." And no advice of Nicholson could turn the stubborn Cree from his purpose.

When his provision bags were lashed on his sled, there was a handshake all around and a babel of Bo'-jo's from the Indians gathered to speed the mad trapper who was taking a four-hundred-mile trail in midwinter for the chance of getting himself killed in the great fight across the Big Water.