"Bo' jou', Running Wolf; bo' jou', Three Feathers," greeted the chief trader.
"Bo' jou', Strong Father," returned the Cree chieftain with grave politeness.
Three Feathers did not speak, but contented himself with nodding sullenly. He was not a favorite with Dunvegan. Several times the two had clashed in the process of trade, for Running Wolf's son was a spoiled child of the wilderness grown up to ignorant and stubborn maturity. He represented the ambitious type of Indian, the dissentient, the inciter, the yeast of superstitious unrest fated to be the curse of his race.
"Your hunting has been unrewarded," sympathized the chief trader, speaking to Running Wolf. He used the Cree dialect which he had acquired in his years of dealing with the natives.
"Ae," replied Running Wolf. "We did not find the caribou. Nor did we see the trail of any other game."
"How was that?" asked Dunvegan. "Your braves are wise in the ways of the caribou, the moose, and all of the wild creatures. How is it their cunning brought them nothing?"
"I do not know," the chief responded simply, "but the spirits were not kind to us. Perhaps the north wind told the caribou of our coming."
"It was not so," spoke Three Feathers maliciously. "It was instead the bad magic of the white traders. The spirits also were kind, for they gave us no game and turned us from our hunting that our squaws might not be stolen." He talked brazenly, having shrewdly guessed in his feverish brain that Dunvegan's errand concerned the woman his father wished to take as a squaw.
"Who steals our women?" cried Running Wolf, turning on his son with an expression of vague alarm.
"Ask the Strong Father there," Three Feathers directed, forcing the issue upon Dunvegan.