"Been on short, rations myself," returned the northerner. "Don't like it! Isn't safe! Rips a man's nerves to the raw when Indians glare at him with hungry eyes eighteen hours out of the twenty-four."
"What was the matter?" drawled the mountaineer. "Hudson's Bay been tampering with your Indians? Now if you had a good Indian wife as I have, you could defy the beggars to turn trade away——"
"Aye, that's so," agreed the winterer, "I heard of a fellow on the Athabasca who had to marry a squaw before he could get a pair of racquets made; but that wasn't my trouble. Game was scarce."
"Game scarce on MacKenzie River?" A chorus of voices vented their surprise. To the outside world game is always scarce, reported scarce on MacKenzie River and everywhere else by the jealous fur traders; but these deceptions are not kept up among hunters fraternizing at the same banquet board.
"Mighty scarce. Some of the tribe died out from starvation. The Hudson's Bay in our district were in bad plight. We took six of them in—Hadn't heard of the Souris plunder, you may be sure."
"More fools they to go into the Athabasca," declared the mountaineer.
"Bigger fools to send another brigade there this year when they needn't expect help from us," interjected a third trader.
"You don't say they're sending another lot of men to the Athabasca!" exclaimed the winterer.
"Yes I do—under Colin Robertson," affirmed the third man.
"Colin Robertson—the Nor'-Wester?"