: Kasba (White Partridge): A Story of Hudson Bay by Ray George R - Hudson Bay Fiction

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CHAPTER. PAGE.

KASBA

It was a bright, bitter-cold day in the short days of winter. The sun shone forlornly upon the bleak, ice-bound shores of Hudson Bay, as if in despair at its utter inability to warm the intensely cold atmosphere, or change in the slightest degree the frozen face of nature. Limitless fields of dazzling Whiteness stretched to the horizon on either hand; a tremendous expanse of turbulent ice-fields, of hills and ridges, of plains and dells; a great white world, apparently empty.

Over all was the silence of death; a silence of awful profundity, yet at the same time an indescribably beautiful revelation.

Near at hand a trapped Arctic fox lay dishevelled and bleeding, its little green eyes glittering evilly and watching with some apprehension the movements of an object which had sprung up, apparently from nowhere, to advance upon it with startling directness.

The object was Roy Thursby, an intrepid young officer of the Hudson's Bay Company, visiting his "line" of traps; a big fellow of five-and-twenty, with muscles of iron; a clean-shaven face--a noble face that betrayed a high-minded nature; eyes that as a rule were hard, but could soften; and a heart that never quailed. He was dressed in moleskin trousers, a pair of long blue stroud leggings, a coat made of hairy-deerskin , with a hood edged with fur, a l'Assumption belt that encircled his waist, and large deerskin moccasins, under which he undoubtedly wore at least two pairs of hairy-deerskin socks. Mittens of dressed deerskin were suspended from his shoulders by a worsted cord, and a fur cap with earpieces completed his costume. He wore snowshoes and carried a hunting-bag across his back and a rifle over his shoulder.

Over the undulating plain he came, pausing occasionally, diverging rarely, and ever nearer.

At length there was the sound of crunching snow, the swish of snowshoes; a short, stifled bark, and a white, furry, inanimate thing lay on the snow.

Without doffing his mitts Roy reset the trap. It was a steel trap, destitute of teeth, with two springs. The jaws when spread out flat were exactly on a level with the snow. He hid the chain and brushed a thin layer of snow on top of the trap. A few scraps of fish were scattered about for bait and the whole carefully smoothed over, so that it was almost impossible to tell that anything was there.

Then he straightened himself. The air had needles in it, and he readjusted the hood of his hairy coat and tightened the wide ribbed belt around his waist.

Slipping the fox into his bag, he reached for his axe and gun, and with the long, even strides of one who could never tire, continued his "rounds," pausing now and then to "trim" a trap when nothing was in it, or killing an animal when caught and dropping it into his trapping-bag.

As he pressed on, his keen eyes, ever alert, caught a glimpse of a small dark blot moving along the face of a ridge of rocks in the foreground. He paused in his stride to scrutinize the moving object; then, apparently satisfied, he resumed his tramp.

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