The Valley of Silent Men

Valley Of Silent Men, by James
Oliver Curwood

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Curwood #8 in our series by James Oliver Curwood
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Title: The Valley Of Silent Men A Story of the Three River Company
Author: James Oliver Curwood
Release Date: December, 2003 [Etext #4707] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 5,
2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN
A STORY OF THE THREE RIVER COUNTRY
BY JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD
AUTHOR OF "THE RIVER'S END," ETC.

THE VALLEY OF SILENT MEN
Before the railroad's thin lines of steel bit their way up through the
wilderness, Athabasca Landing was the picturesque threshold over
which one must step who would enter into the mystery and adventure
of the great white North. It is still Iskwatam--the "door" which opens to
the lower reaches of the Athabasca, the Slave, and the Mackenzie. It is
somewhat difficult to find on the map, yet it is there, because its history
is written in more than a hundred and forty years of romance and
tragedy and adventure in the lives of men, and is not easily forgotten.
Over the old trail it was about a hundred and fifty miles north of
Edmonton. The railroad has brought it nearer to that base of civilization,
but beyond it the wilderness still howls as it has howled for a thousand
years, and the waters of a continent flow north and into the Arctic
Ocean. It is possible that the beautiful dream of the real-estate dealers
may come true, for the most avid of all the sportsmen of the earth, the
money-hunters, have come up on the bumpy railroad that sometimes
lights its sleeping cars with lanterns, and with them have come
typewriters, and stenographers, and the art of printing advertisements,
and the Golden Rule of those who sell handfuls of earth to hopeful
purchasers thousands of miles away--"Do others as they would do
you." And with it, too, has come the legitimate business of barter and
trade, with eyes on all that treasure of the North which lies between the
Grand Rapids of the Athabasca and the edge of the polar sea. But still
more beautiful than the dream of fortunes quickly made is the deep-
forest superstition that the spirits of the wilderness dead move onward
as steam and steel advance, and if this is so, the ghosts of a thousand

Pierres and Jacquelines have risen uneasily from their graves at
Athabasca Landing, hunting a new quiet farther north.
For it was Pierre and Jacqueline, Henri and Marie, Jacques and his
Jeanne, whose brown hands for a hundred and forty years opened and
closed this door. And