Six or seven years ago Peter God had come to the post for the first time
with his furs. He had given his name as Peter God, and the Company had
not questioned it, or wondered. Stranger names than Peter's were a part
of the Northland; stranger faces than his came in out of the white
wilderness trails; but none was more silent, or came in and went more
quickly. In the gray of the afternoon he drove in with his dogs and his
furs; night would see him on his way back to the Barrens, supplies for
another three months of loneliness on his sledge.
It would have been hard to judge his age--had one taken the trouble to
try. Perhaps he was thirty-eight. He surely was not French. There was no
Indian blood in him. His heavy beard was reddish, his long thick hair
distinctly blond, and his eyes were a bluish-gray.
For seven years, season after season, the Hudson's Bay Company's clerk
had written items something like the following in his record-books:
Feb. 17. Peter God came in to-day with his furs. He leaves this afternoon
or to-night for his trapping grounds with fresh supplies.
The year before, in a momentary fit of curiosity, the clerk had added:
Curious why Peter God never stays in Fort MacPherson overnight.
And more curious than this was the fact that Peter God never asked for
mail, and no letter ever came to Fort MacPherson for him.
The Great Barren enveloped him and his mystery.
Pages:
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225