"Yes. Do you trust me?"
"Personally, yes. But the Company is here on business. When we're attacked, it's time enough to serve out guns to our men."
"Who don't know butt from barrel, and can't hit a house from inside."
"There's something in that. At the same time, Mr. Storm, we have not found your Lower Kutenais especially reliable for trade."
"They're true as steel!"
"No doubt. Perhaps twenty years back, or even more, Lieut. Tschirikov, late of the Russian Navy, came down the coast from Russian America with a schooner-load of sea otter. Had he gone west to China with that cargo he might have done much better, but still, that was not our business. The pelts were, so far as we know, honestly come by. We bought them. He took trade goods, and set off upcountry, to start a trading post among the Kutenais. Quite naturally we expected to buy his furs. We got none."
Storm grinned amiably, and Douglas probed a little deeper now.
"Once or twice when I was passing with our brigades, I camped with the good old fellow and offered to talk pelts. He would change the subject at once. I never found out what sort of business he was—well, concealing in our Territory. I thought, to tell you the plain truth, Storm, that it might be worth while to send you, to find out Tschirikov's game."
Storm laughed until the tears came.
"It ain't no sort of secret," he said at last. "According to old Fatbald that load of sea otter and fur seal was worth at Pekin about a million pounds."