For more than a century York Factory had been the principal port of entry for the Hudson Bay Company. There the Company’s ships from England brought the supplies and trade goods destined for all the widely separated posts in the interior. To York Factory, in bark canoes and wooden boats, down rivers and lakes, from all parts of the Company’s great domain, came the bales of costly furs to be sorted and repacked and shipped. A considerable staff was employed at the place, a Chief Factor, a Chief Trader, a surgeon, several clerks and apprentice clerks, a steward, a shipwright, a carpenter, a mason, a cooper, a blacksmith, a tailor, laborers, cooks, and servants. The boatmen or voyageurs who went to and fro into the interior were hired independently for each trip.
Until he sailed for America, Walter had never even heard of the Hudson Bay Company or the fur trade. Everything in the fort was novel and interesting to him. A good-natured apprentice clerk, who spoke French readily, showed him the Indian store, a large room well filled with all sorts of goods used in the Indian trade, from bales of heavy blankets, blue and red woolens, calicos of every color, long-barreled trading guns, kegs of powder, and big iron and copper kettles, to drawers of useful little things, gun flints, fire steels, files, awls, needles, fish hooks, twine, beads of all imaginable tints, and ochre, vermilion, and other dry colors, used by the Indians to adorn both their handiwork and themselves.
“I never saw so many different things in one shop,” Walter commented.
The clerk laughed. “The worst of it is that we have to keep the closest account of it all. We must know what is in every package sent out and what post it goes to. Being a fur trader isn’t all adventure I can tell you. There is a lot of office drudgery, with all the bookkeeping, invoicing, and checking of lists. We can’t afford to make mistakes,” he added soberly. “The very lives of the men in some far-away post may depend on their getting the right supplies. Why, last year——” He broke off suddenly, and switched to English. “I spoke to the Chief Trader about your proposal. He says it can’t be done. It’s not the policy of the Company to send voyageurs out to trade, especially on such long trips.”
Walter had turned to see to whom the clerk was speaking. He had heard no footsteps, but there, close behind him, was a tall man in blue coat, deerskin leggings, and moccasins. In his surprise, the boy drew back a little and stood staring. Of all the men he had seen since coming ashore, this one was the strangest and most striking. He was tall, powerfully built, and very dark of skin, with high cheek bones and high-bridged nose. His long, coarse black hair, slick and shining with grease, was worn in what seemed to the Swiss boy a curious fashion for a man, parted in the middle and plaited in two braids bound with deerskin thongs and hanging one over each shoulder.
“You not give me goods?” The man’s voice was peculiarly deep, not unmusical but of a hard, metallic quality. His small, dark eyes looked straight into the clerk’s large blue ones.
The young man shook his head. “No, your plan is too wild, too much risk in it. That sort of thing is against the Company’s policy.”
The voyageur’s brown face stiffened. His hard eyes seemed to catch fire as they rested first on the clerk and then, for a moment, on Walter. Without a word he turned and with long, soft-footed stride, left the room as noiselessly as he had entered it.
“Pleasant manners,” commented the clerk. “He needn’t have included you in his wrath.”
“What did he want?” asked Walter. He had understood but little of the brief conversation.