A. A. Strachan

“ I realized that I was very much alone and the chances of anyone coming to my assistance was as one in a thousand. I had not seen a human being for many days, my homestead being miles off the trail that led to the lumber-camps, and as I said before, I had no near neighbors. I shuddered as the thought gripped me that I might lie there until I starved to death, a prey to the prowling wolves against whom I was powerless to put up any kind of a fight for my life.
As this dreadful thought struck me, I glanced helplessly around. My ax lay some little distance away. ”

“ It was while engaged on this building that I met with the accident that, but for the intelligence of Jim, must have cost me my life.
A log building, as everybody who has attempted it knows, is not an easy undertaking for one man alone. The cutting, hauling and hewing of the logs is no very difficult matter, of course, but when you come to hoist them one upon another, you will wish you had someone to handle the other end. ”

“ The logs I cut near my own land; the lumber I had to haul thirty miles from town. Before the first snow flew, my house and stable were finished. I had dug a good well, broken ten acres and had a liberal supply of firewood on hand. A team of horses, and a couple of heifers, comprised my livestock. Jim was my society. After snow fell I devoted my attention to trapping and fishing.
Winter fishing on Little Trout Lake, about ten miles from my homestead, is not a very sportsmanlike occupation. You simply stick up a tent on the ice, cut a hole and shove in a net. ”