Prologue
BOOK ONE—Repatriation
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
BOOK TWO—The Debt
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
BOOK THREE—The Payment
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
If one can just lie close enough to the breast of thewilderness, he can't help but be imbued with some of the lifethat pulses therein.—From a Frontiersman's Diary.
Long ago, when the great city of Gitcheapolis was a rather small, untidyhamlet in the middle of a plain, it used to be that a pool of water,possibly two hundred feet square, gathered every spring immediately backof the courthouse. The snow falls thick and heavy in Gitcheapolis inwinter; and the pond was nothing more than snow water that theinefficient drainage system of the city did not quite absorb. Now snowwater is occasionally the most limpid, melted-crystal thing in theworld. There are places just two thousand miles west of Gitcheapoliswhere you can see it pouring pure and fresh off of the snow fields,scouring out a ravine from the great rock wall of a mountain side,leaping faster than a deer leaps—and when you speak of the speed of adescending deer you speak of something the usual mortal eye canscarcely follow—from cataract to cataract; and the sight is always apleasing one to behold. Incidentally, these same snow streams are quiteoften simply swarming with trout,—brook and cutthroat, steelhead andeven those speckled fellows that fishermen call Dolly Vardens for somereason that no one has ever quite been able to make out. They are to befound in every ripple, and they bite at a fly as if they were going tocrush the steel hook into dust between their teeth, and the cold watergives them spirit to fight until the last breath of strength is gonefrom their beautiful bodies. How they came there, and what their purposeis in ev