Thus thrown upon my own resources, I betook myself to the roomy cabin where the cook reigned supreme. Thence, with breakfast disposed of, to the store. I found there a small, bewhiskered man bowed over a ledger, and a dozen husky packers stowing goods on the shelves. The clerical person gazed at me over a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles in a colorless, uninterested sort of way. I took him to be the bookkeeping machine of the concern, and such proved to be the case. And when I asked for “George,” prudently refraining from mention of surnames he told me primly that “Mr. Barreau” had gone up the river, leaving word that I was to make myself at home in the meantime. Having delivered himself of this message, he resumed his task. So I continued my round of the post until I located old Ben Wise. What between chatting with Ben, and sundry games of seven-up with one or two of the others whom I knew, and long spells of sitting alone in the cabin smoking over the fire, I managed to murder time for three days. At the end of which period Barreau returned.
He did not come alone, but at the head of a veritable flotilla of birch-bark canoes, laden with a picturesque mixture of Indians, squaws, round-faced pappooses, sharp-nosed dogs, and the household goods pertaining to these. By the appearance of things I inferred that he had been out to jog up the natives who had signified willingness to trade with the house of Montell. They beached the canoes, and pitched their lodges along the river bank, a little way from the stockade. In the two hours of daylight following the arrival of the vanguard other little parties came slipping quietly around the curve of the Sicannie, pitched their camps, and set about cooking food. The flat was speckled with twinkling dots of fire when dark vanquished the long twilight.
Barreau was tired, and had little to tell. I had come by a new deck of cards through favor of the colorless Mr. Cullen, and we played a silent game or two of euchre that night before turning in. By dawn we had breakfasted and were at the store, and the copper-skinned men of the lodges began to come in and cast their eyes upon such things as they desired.
All forenoon I watched this silent outfitting of the hunters, saw this one and that stand wrapped to the ears in his gaudy blanket, seeming not to see or to be conscious of aught that transpired. Then of a sudden he would point abruptly to a certain article, a trap or two, maybe, a caddy of tea, a flask of powder, and emit a guttural sound that Barreau interpreted to Cullen, who would solemnly make an entry in his notebook. When the red brother had reached his trading limit, his squaw took the burden of his purchases on her back, and he strode forth wrapped in a dignity even more striking than his blanket, she following meekly at his heels.
“How do you manage to keep track of them all?” I asked Barreau, as we sat at dinner. “Suppose these Indians that you outfit now don’t show up again? Can you trust them so absolutely? For my part I can hardly tell one from another.”
“You’d find out that they have distinct individual characteristics,” Barreau replied, “if you were with them long. I know most of these fellows well enough to pick them out of a crowd. In fact, a good many of them won’t trade except with me—which is one strong hold I have over my slippery partner. And so far as trusting them, an Indian’s word is good as gold. For every dollar’s worth of stuff we let them have this fall they’ll bring ten dollars’ worth of pelts next spring—unless it is an extraordinary winter. Anyway, we don’t stand to lose a great deal on what we trust them for. Where we will make money will be in the spring trade. They’ll have plenty of furs left after their debt is paid, and they’ll want guns and more powder, flour and tea for the summer, tobacco, and clothes and gew-gaws for the women and pappooses. If the winter is normal we’re going to have a big trade; bigger even than I thought. I wouldn’t mind,” he concluded, with a short laugh, “if Montell had to go clear to Benton, and got snowed in there. That would eliminate one dangerous factor. But that’s too much to hope for.”
“It’s a long trip,” I reflected. “He can’t get to the Missouri in time to send his daughter down on the last boat, even. The river will freeze any day now. Benton would be a dreary place for her to stay alone, I should think. He may stay there with her.”
“Not likely,” Barreau contended. “As it happens, she knows one or two rather nice families who are wintering at Benton, and she’ll be apt to stay with them. He has been altogether too keen to have his finger in this winter’s pie—when it wasn’t needed there. No, the old fox has something up his sleeve—something that he’s been leading up to ever since we left Benton. He’ll be back, if he has to come on his hands and knees.”
Barreau was right. Montell did come back, and the date of his return was only something more than forty-eight hours from the time of that conversation. We were stretched upon our respective bunks, I listening to Barreau’s talk of long-dead traders who had undertaken to buck the Hudson’s Bay Company, when some one tapped on the door; and at Barreau’s laconic “come in,” who but Montell himself should enter! He shut the door carefully behind him, and waddled to a seat. Barreau raised on one elbow.
“You!” he said sharply. “Back here already? What has happened now?”