The Woman from Outside [on Swan River]

pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. On a January afternoon, as darkness was beginning to gather, the gang sat around the stove in the Company store at Fort Enterprise discussing that inexhaustible question, the probable arrival of the mail. The big lofty store, with its glass front, its electric lights, its stock of expensive goods set forth on varnished shelves, suggested a city emporium rather than the Company's most north-westerly post, nearly a thousand miles from civilization; but human energy accomplishes seeming miracles in the North as elsewhere, and John Gaviller the trader was above all an energetic man. Throughout the entire North they point with pride to Gaviller's flour mill, his big steamboat, his great yellow clap-boarded house – two storeys and attic, and a fence of palings around it! Why, at Fort Enterprise they even have a sidewalk, the only one north of fifty-five! I don't see why Hairy Ben can't come down, said Doc Giddings – Doc was the grouch of the post – "the ice on the river has been fit for travelling for a month now