The Danger Trail | Page 2

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