But the times were getting very busy at Fort de Seviere. Before the
Assiniboines were ready to depart back up the waterways down which they
had come, their canoes laden with the wealth of the coming season,
other flotillas were on the little waves of the river, other chiefs
made their entrance up the main way of the post, and the goods of the
Hudson's Bay Company went out in a stream as the priceless pelts came
in.
"Lad," said Edmonton Ridgar with that easy probing of the well-known
friend, "there is something eating at your mind these days. The trade
goes differently from that of last year. It is not so all-absorbing. I
fear me that the Nor'westers, with their plundering and their tales of
deportation, have entered a wedge of worry."
"'Tis not of the Nor'westers I give a thought, Ridgar," he smiled,
accepting the veiled raillery, "for you well know that we of the
Company are above them, though it was but yesterday that an Indian
brought word of a trapper at Isle a La Crosse being maltreated in the
woods by a couple of their sneaking cutthroats and two packs of beaver
taken from him for which they laughingly offered him in payment a
bundle of mangy skins cast out from the summer's pickings.
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