Connie Morgan in the Fur Country

ading Company are located upon a high bank, at the foot of which the mighty Mackenzie rushes northward to the frozen sea. On a clear day the Rocky

at Bear Lake, and a thousand other lakes and rivers, named and unnamed, to the eastward, come each year to trade their f

olated post, and the two were heartily welcomed by the agents of the rival t

om all indications fur would be plentiful that year, but both exp

hey claim they get better prices over there an' maybe they do. The Yukon traders get the goods into the country cheaper, an' they could sell them cheaper, an' I ain't blamin' the Indians for tradin' where they can do best. But,

all their way up here for so long it makes them mad if anybody else comes i

tter with the

ne who managed the affairs of the Norther

the Indians that has dealt with 'em. You can see 'em hanging around them railroad towns, that was once posts whe

ims of the bootleggers and the whiskey runners! H

r!" exclaimed Hansen, angrily. "T

legitimate trader. We will handle his case fairly, an' to do that we must consider first the Hudson's Bay Company. For two hundred an' fifty years we have been traders of the North-we know the needs of the North-an' we supply them. The Indian's interests are our interests, and we trade nothing but the best goods. For two centuries an' a half we have studied the North and we have dealt fairly. And may I say here," with a glance toward Hansen, "that there are several other companies with sound financial backing and established posts that have profited by our experience and also supply only the best of goods,

ould be good for you

hat do we do? We say to the Indians, 'Do not kill any beaver this year and next year.' And they obey us-why? Because we will not buy any beaver here during that time. They will not kill what

at part of the country. Another thing, in the fur posts our word is law. We tell the Indians when they can begin to take fur, and when they must stop. The result is we handle only clean, prime pelts with the flesh side white as paper. With the free trader a pelt is a pelt, prime or unprime, it makes no difference. So the killing goes merrily on where the free traders are-and soon all

ppose a free trader dealt i

e to charge for them? We buy in vast quantities-in some cases we take the entire output of factories, and we have an established system of transport

debt do

r. It also depends upon the size of his family, the distance of his hunting ground from the post, and his general prospec

you mean

y skins for his pack of furs. He has little idea of what we mean when we tell him he has five hundred skins' worth of fur, so we count out five hundred of these made beaver-he can see them, can feel them-the value of his catch is immediately reduced to something concrete-something he can understand-then we take away the amount of his debt, and if there are still some made beaver remaining, he k

ust as easy to figure it i

o ship silver dollars back and forth between here and Edmonton? Ten thousand of them would weigh close to six hundred pounds! Six hundred pounds would mean, on scows, six pieces-and mighty valuable pieces too, to be loaded and unloaded a dozen times, carried over portages, shot through dangerous rapids, carried up and down slippery river banks and across slippery planks to the scows. Suppose one of these pieces were dropped overboard by one of the none too careful half-breed rivermen? The Company would lose just so many dollars. Or, suppose the riverman very conveniently dropped the piece into the water where he could recover it again? A dollar is a dollar-it can be spent an

ie, "but how about

d be worth five dollars, and another exactly like it in size and colour should be worth ten, or twenty, or fifty-and another piece of paper be worth nothing at all. I am sure no one at the posts would welcome the carrying on of business upon a cash basis-I know I should not. The Canadian North is the cleanest land in the world, in so far as robbery is concerned, thanks to the Mounted. But with its vast wilderness for hiding places and its lack of

, "to find an outfit that doesn'

y goods with it. We make the profit on the goods-but if they had bought those same goods for fur-we would have made the profit on the fur, also-and primarily, we are a fur company-althoug

rters, and Connie and 'Merican Joe were given the spare room in the factor's