“The Company will not permit a voyageur to trade. Sometimes, it is true, they may send a man out to buy skins. Perhaps they might send Murray, but I do not think so, and he would need more goods, a whole canoe or cart or sled load.”
“But the Company refused to let him have them,” Walter explained. “At Fort York he asked for a lot of goods, on credit, so he could go trade with the Sioux.”
“The Sioux?”
“Yes, I heard the clerk tell him that the Chief Trader wouldn’t give him the goods. The clerk said it was a crazy scheme. Murray must have stolen our pemmican and exchanged it, or got someone else to do it for him, at Norway House. He must have wanted those things badly to be willing to go hungry for them.”
“He can endure hunger like an Indian,” Louis returned, “and one of the voyageurs in Laroque’s boat has been sharing his food with him. I saw him do it. He is afraid of Murray for some reason. It may be you are right about his selling the pemmican. The Indians want all those little things. They are eager to get them. He might begin——”
“Embark, embark!”
The two boys hurried towards the boat. As they went, Walter whispered, “Are you going to tell about that package?”
“I think so. Not to Laroque, but to the Chief Trader at Fort Douglas.”
When Murray stepped into the boat, he stooped to examine his bundle. Would he discover that it had been opened? It was an anxious moment for Louis and Walter, but the steersman took his place without even looking in their direction. Walter would not have thought of opening Murray’s package. But the Canadian boy’s upbringing had been different.
The banks bordering the rapids were gravelly, the growth thinner and smaller. Then came lower, muddy shores, and Walter got his first glimpse of the prairie. On the west side, only a few trees and bushes edged the river. The country beyond stretched away flat and open, but it was not the fertile, green land the Swiss boy had heard about. The plain was yellow-gray, desolate and dead looking. In one place a wide stretch was burned black. Could this be the rich and beautiful land Captain Mai had described?