Just below "the narrows," on the northeastern shore of Snare Lake, and almost upon the site of Old Fort Enterprise, erected and occupied by Lieutenant, later Sir John Franklin during the second winter of his first Arctic expedition, Bob MacNair had built his fort. The fort itself differed in no important particular from many of the log trading forts of the Hudson Bay Company. Grouped about the long, low building, within the enclosure of the log stockade, were the cabins of Indians who had forsaken the vicissitudes of the lean, barren grounds and attached themselves permanently to MacNair's colony.
Under his tutelage, they learned to convert the work of their hands into something more nearly approaching the comforts of existence than anything they had ever known. Where, as trappers of fur, they had succeeded, by dint of untold hardship and privation and suffering, in obtaining the barest necessities of life from the great fur company, they now found themselves housed in warm, comfortable cabins, eating good food, and clothing their bodies, and the bodies of their wives and children, in thick, warm clothing that defied the rigours of the Arctic winters.
While to the credit of each man, upon MacNair's books, stood an amount in tokens of "made beaver," which to any trapper in all the Northland would have spelled wealth beyond wildest dreams. And so they came to respect this stern, rugged man who dealt with them fairly--to love him, and also to fear him. And upon Snare Lake his word became the law, from which there was no appeal. Tender as a woman in sickness, counting no cost or hardship too dear in the rendering of assistance to the needy, he was at the same time hard and unbending toward wilful offenders, and a very real terror to the enemies of his people.
He had killed men for selling whiskey to his Indians. And those of his own people who drank the whiskey, he had flogged with dog-whips--floggings that had been administered in no half-hearted or uncertain manner, and that had ceased only upon the tiring of his arm. And many there were among his Indians who could testify that the arm was slow to tire.
To this little colony, upon the fourth day after his departure from Chloe Elliston's school on the Yellow Knife, came LeFroy with his freighted canoe. And because it was not his first trip among them, all knew his mission.