Adventure Magazine Cover, April 3, 1918 — page 37: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Ambush were pressed harder than ever, toiling in a sweat through the sweltering August days. The trading-room was a-reek with the odor of fur. The teepees of the hunters were piled with debt they carried away from the store, pyramided with flour, sugar, tea, tobacco, bacon,, beans. The hunters’ squaws came likewise and had their lords clutter them up with soap, ribbon, calico, velvet, thimbles, mirrors, beads, silk handkerchiefs, Balmoral skirts, huckaback towels and a hundred other useless things. Gay as their squaws, these lords went about in Wincy shirts with castor-oil rubbed on their heads, gloating over the new capotes laid by for colder weather, proud of their bright axes, knives, brass-bound trade guns and ammunition. Much of the food they wasted in gorging feasts. Much of the ammunition they foolishly fired at marks. But, in Indian logic, what did it matter? By the end of the first mad week Carlisle, supreme in the field, had hammered the price of beaver to thirty skins. Also by the end of that mad week Cum- berland House was stripped of every article of trade goods, every pound of provisions. So, too, were the other posts, and the Factor _ congratulated himself and hismen. Hehad won his game. It was what he aimed at. Too late Wayne had awakened to the cost of playing Northern poker. The fort was out of farinaceous food, and he was forced to send messengers off into the forest for others of his independent posts to come to his aid with enough sup- plies to tide him over the Winter. Riche- lieu, however, sent no messengers forth. He looked at the empty shelves of his post, shrugged his shoulders and awaited Car- lisle’s next move. It was Saturday night and the Factor, Galt and Drummond with the volunteer help of Andrews balanced up the company’s books. Besides forcing the hands of their competitors in the matter of supplies, they had correred the bulk of the furs. Galt’s fur-room was crammed with pelts. It was true that they had paid five times too much for some of the beaver and other cheaper pelts, but they would make up that loss on the priceless skins. like the black and silver foxes which all traders undervalued for the Indians. More than that, they had secured the trade, and the trade, in the Indian mind, was the psychological thing. “But are you sure, Galt,’ asked Carlisle 35 when they finished, “that all our Indians are in? None who got debt are missing off the books?” “Only old White Loon, his two sons, nephew and cousin,” answered Galt. ‘““They all lived in one family, and they’re all just nicely over the smallpox. I got word of their coming in and stopped them up the shore by Carcajou Cove. They went into camp there. I made them throw away their furs but gave them value for them. “I dumped new clothes, outfits, supplies, and everything for them on the shore and told them to strip and leave the old camp naked. They w&lked out bare as babes new-born and took the fresh stuff, and then I sent them back on their trap lines.” “That’s good—you did right, Galt,” commended Carlisle. ‘‘We want no infec- tion here. And there are no others?” tN G.?? “Then we'll close up and have a night’s sleep.” “Ba gar, yes,’ yawned Drummond. *‘1’m dozin’ in ma stride, me—snorin’ ovaire de beaver packs everyw’ere. Bon soir, messieurs.”” He lurched off, staggering for sleep, and the others rose and followed. “T’m glad you finished up before Sunday, Paul,’ observed Andrews, as they passed up-stairs in the Factor’s house. “Oh, yes, Father! As you know, most of the Factors go on just the same with their trading or routing of the brigades, but I be- lieve in resting as far as possible one day inseven. See youin the morning, Andrews, and hope I'll be up in time for your service!”’ Oy lake fog, dank and woolly, but when mca} Carlisle stepped out of his house he saw the sun sluicing away the fog with a flood of gold. He beheld the ordered march of the rollers, white wave-crest behind white wave-crest as far as the eye could reach, running beneath the fog drift, and the tops of the pine-clad islands lifting starkly above. Andrews was already on the shore, taking his stand upon a huge rock that rose up like a giant altar, and whites and Indians from all three posts were blackening the beach, the bronzed, roughly-clothed woodsmen, the smoky savages, the squaws decked in all their finery with new velvet moss-bags for their wailing papooses. On this day of truce in their trade war the SUNDAY morning broke in a white COnniclooo S (C@