MacFarlane opened the packs and examined their contents, fur by fur, laying them in separate piles and paying for each as he appraised it in brass tokens of made beaver. The three bucks looked on in stolid indifference but MacFarlane noted that the eyes of the squaw followed his every movement.
As a general rule the agents of the Hudson's Bay Company deal fairly with the Indians in the trading of the common or standard skins, and MacFarlane was no exception. It was in a spirit of fun, to see what the squaw would do, that he counted out thirty made beaver in payment for a large otter skin.
The Indian woman shook her head: "No, that is a good otter. He is worth more." And with a smile the Scotchman counted ten additional tokens into the pile, whereat the squaw nodded approval
and the trading proceeded. When at last it was finished the squaw took entire charge of the purchasing, pausing only now and then, to consult one or the other of the Indians in their own tongue, and in her selection of only the essentials, MacFarlane realized that he was dealing with that rarest of northern Indians, one who possessed sound common sense and the force of character to reject the useless trinkets so dear to the Indian heart.
While the bucks were making up their packs the squaw plunged her hand into the bottom of the moss-bag from which she had taken the baby, and drew out a single skin. For a long time she stood holding the skin in one hand while with the other she stroked its softly gleaming surface. MacFarlane and Molaire gazed at the skin in fascination while Margot rose from the blanket where she had been playing with the two babies, and even Corporal Downey who knew little of skins crowded close to feast his eyes on the jet black pelt whose hairs gleamed with silver radiance. In all the forty years of his trading Molaire had handled fewer than a dozen such skins—a true black fox, taken in its prime, so that the silvered hairs seemed to emit a soft radiance of their own—a skin to remember, and to talk about. Then the squaw handed the pelt to MacFarlane and smiled faintly as she watched the trader examine it almost hair by hair.
"Where did you get it?" he asked.
"I trapped it far to the northward, in the barren
grounds, upon a river that has no name. It is a good skin."
"Did you trap it yourself?"
"Yes. I am a good trapper. My man was a good trapper and he showed me how. These are good trappers, too," she indicated the three Indians, "And all the rest who are with us. There are thirty of us counting the women and children. But we have not had good luck. That is all the fur we have caught," she pointed to the skins MacFarlane had just bought, "Those and the little black fox. When the storms stops we will go again into the barren grounds, and we must have food, or, if we have bad luck again, some of us will die."