Gods Country--And the Woman

God's Country--And the Woman

by James Oliver Curwood

The Project Gutenberg Etext of God's Country--And the Woman
by James Oliver Curwood (#3 in our series by James Oliver Curwood)
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Title: God's Country--And the Woman
Author: James Oliver Curwood
Release Date: October, 2003 [Etext #4585] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 12,
2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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God's Country--And the Woman

By James Oliver Curwood
Author of "The Honor of the Big Snows," "Philip Steele," Etc.
CHAPTER ONE
Philip Weyman's buoyancy of heart was in face of the fact that he had
but recently looked upon Radisson's unpleasant death, and that he was
still in a country where the water flowed north. He laughed and he sang.
His heart bubbled over with cheer. He talked to himself frankly and
without embarrassment, asked himself questions, answered them,
discussed the beauties of nature and the possibilities of storm as if there
were three or four of him instead of one.
At the top end of the world a man becomes a multiple being--if he is
white. Two years along the rim of the Arctic had taught Philip the
science by which a man may become acquainted with himself, and in
moments like the present, when both his mental and physical spirits
overflowed, he even went so far as to attempt poor Radisson's "La
Belle Marie" in the Frenchman's heavy basso, something between a
dog's sullen growl and the low rumble of distant thunder. It made him
cough. And then he laughed again, scanning the narrowing sweep of
the lake ahead of him.
He felt like a boy, and he chuckled as he thought of the definite reason
for it. For twenty-three months he had been like a piece of rubber
stretched to a tension--sometimes almost to the snapping point. Now
had come the reaction, and he was going HOME. Home! It was that
one word that caused a shadow to flit over his face, and only once or
twice had he forgotten and let it slip between his lips. At least he was
returning to civilization--getting AWAY from the everlasting drone of
breaking ice and the clack-clack tongue of the Eskimo.
With the stub of a pencil Philip had figured out on a bit of paper about
where he was that morning. The whalebone hut of his last Arctic camp
was eight hundred miles due north. Fort Churchill, over on Hudson's
Bay, was four hundred miles to the east, and Fort Resolution, on the
Great Slave, was four hundred miles to the west. On his map he had

drawn a heavy circle about Prince Albert, six hundred miles to the
south. That was the nearest line of rail. Six days back Radisson had
died after a mouth's struggle with that terrible thing they called "le mort
rouge," or the Red Death. Since then Philip