Presently Mary-Lou came back. “No can find Jimmy,” she said. “Nobody see him.”
Proceeding to the rear of the store to survey the damage, the two girls came upon the wet, dark stain spreading over the floor. The instant she saw it, Loseis knew what had happened and went very still; but Mary-Lou cried out: “Look, the window is out!” and must needs stick her head through the hole to look.
A piercing shriek broke from the red girl; she fell back half witless with terror into Loseis’s arms.
CHAPTER IV
AT FORT GOOD HOPE
At Fort Good Hope on the big river, the free trader Andrew Gault and his financial backer David Ogilvie, stood by the flagpole concluding their business, while the steam-launch Courier waited in the stream below to carry Ogilvie down river.
Outside of the towns, Fort Good Hope was the most enterprising and progressive Post in that country. The original log buildings were now used as bunk-houses for the half-breed employees; while on one side rose the magnificent dwelling of the trader, built of clapboards in the “outside” style and having fancy porches with turned pillars; and on the other side the equally modern store with plate glass windows imported at God knows what expense and trouble; and a huge sign. This sign was the occasion of considerable humor throughout the country, since there was nobody who required to be told whose store it was.
This was by no means all of the improvements at Fort Good Hope. Gault had built and now operated a steamboat on the river, which connected with a line of wagons across the ninety-mile portage to Caribou Lake, and so kept him in touch with the world. By means of the steamboat he had imported an electric light plant, a sawmill and a steam process mill for grinding and bolting flour. The land along the river was rich, and Gault had established farmers there. They were only frozen out about one year in three; and that was their loss, not Gault’s. His flour, raised and milled on the spot, he was able to sell to the Indians at an enormous profit.
In spite of all this, when Gault made up his accounts with Ogilvie, the financier pursed up his mouth in a grudging fashion, and Gault who was a bitter, proud man, ground his teeth with rage.
“Your improvements are fine, fine,” said Ogilvie dryly; “the Post looks almost like a village on the railway. But my dear man, all this only returns a beggarly ten or fifteen per cent on the investment. I need not point out to you that our company is accustomed to receive two profits on every transaction. In other words we do not want the cash that you remit to us; we want fur. And I’m sorry to see that your consignments of fur have been growing less every year.”
The trader was silent out of anger; and Ogilvie went on: “The history of all the old posts is the same. With the advance of civilization the fur is always retreating. With your steamboats and your sawmills you are hastening the process, my dear Gault. At the other old posts as the fur recedes they reach after it with sub-posts and trading stations. Why don’t you do something of the sort? You are in a better strategic position than any of them, because off to the northwest here you have a vast land that is still written down unexplored on the maps. Why don’t you get that fur?”