"Say half."
"Well, you got 'em cheap at twenty thousand pounds' worth of trade goods."
"Reasonably cheap, yes."
"For trade goods as any Injun tribe is better without."
"Of all the confounded impudence!"
"Better without, and you know it as well as I does. Is trade rum and sham silk handkerchiefs the cargo as makes any nation strong to defend their 'unting grounds, or rich to tide through famines?"
"Well, perhaps not, perhaps not. More useful merchandise would rot on our hands for want of buyers. We are traders, not philanthropists—or dreamers."
"So Fatbald warned the Injuns. Called 'em fools for trading. They traded with him, though, until the bales of furs crowded him into a tipi. He sold them pelts to the Upper Kutenais in trade for 'orses. His pony herds filled all the pastures up above our lake. They bred. He sold them ponies to our Lower Kutenais, for furs of course. In twenty years he's made that low-down fishing tribe into hunters, fighting mountaineers, able to 'old their own, and defend their 'omes. The little kiddies, what used to starve to death if the salmon run came late, is fat as butter now. Our people rides level with the Upper Kutenais and the Flatheads, runs buffalo out on the Blackfoot plains. They're rich. They're respected. They has peace because they don't buy no more rubbish from either you nor them Americans."
"Fatbald the First," said the factor sarcastically, "being gathered to his portly forefathers, King Storm ascends the throne, whose little finger is heavier than the old monarch's thigh. At least, my late friend, however reticent, was not insulting." Then, with a malicious smile, "Your Majesty has, I hear, a few loads of pelts here, eh?"
"You're making fun of me," said Storm, uneasy, ruffled, a little truculent. "Go on! Your medicine is bad, but it ain't strong. Go on."