Seal Bay was astir. It always was astir when this man paid his annual visit. He excited a curiosity that never flagged. His coming was looked for. His going was watched. His coming and going were two of the most baffling riddles confronting the sophisticated minds of a people whose pursuits had no relation to purity or honesty.
The man came with three great dog-trains. Sometimes he came with four, and even five. His sleds were heavy laden, packed to the limits of the capacity of his dogs. They, in turn, were more powerful and better conditioned than any Indian train that visited the place, and each was a full train of five savage creatures more than half wolf.
He drove straight through the main thoroughfare of the town. The onlookers were fully aware of his destination. It was the great store-house over which Lorson Harris presided. And this knowledge set much ill-feeling and resentment stirring. It was always the same. The sturdy, hard-faced man from the north ignored Seal Bay as a community, and only recognized a fellow creature in the great man who wove the net which the Seal Bay Trading Corporation spread over the Northern world.
Something of the position found illumination in the dialogue which passed between two men lounging in Alroy's doorway as the great train passed them by.
"Gee! Makes you wonder if us folks has the plague," laughed Kid Restless, the most successful gambler that haunted Alroy's dive. "He don't see a thing but Lorson's. He'd hate to pass a 'how-dy' to a cur. But his trade ain't as big as last year. Guess Lorson'll halve his smile. He's been coming along fourteen year, ain't it?"
Dupont nodded, his contemplative gaze following the procession of sleds under the skilful driving of their attendants.
"Yep." Dupont was a lesser trader who lived in a state of furious discontent at the monopoly of the greater store. "The Brand outfit's been trading here fourteen years—and more."
"How's that?"
"Oh, ther's a heap queer about that outfit," said the envious whiskered man, whose dark, sallow features suggested plainly enough his Jewish origin. "Maybe it's that makes that feller act same as if we had the—plague. He calls himself Brand, but he ain't the Brand who traded here more than twenty years ago. Guess you wasn't around then. Guess I wasn't, neither. I'd be crazy by now if I had been. But the story's right enough. Brand—Marcel Brand—and his pardner traded here with Lorson more than twenty years back. He came from God knows where, an' he just went right back to the same place. Then him an' his pardner got done up. The darn Eskimos, or neches, or ha'f-breeds, shot 'em both up to small chunks. Lorson was nigh crazy for the trade he lost, for all Brand was a free-trader like Lorson hates best. Then, three years or so later, along comes this guy with the name of 'Marcel Brand,' and carried on the trade. And he's a white man same as the other. It was then Lorson took to smiling plenty again."
"You figger he's the feller that?——"