The Fur Bringers | Page 3

his own trail. I won't
say but what you're right. But what are you going to do? A man can't
live and die alone."
"I don't know," said Ambrose.
"Tell you what," said Peter; "you take the furs out on the steamboat."
"I won't," said Ambrose quickly. "I went out last year. It's your turn."
"But I'm contented here," said Peter.
Ambrose shook his head. "It wouldn't do me any real good," he said. "It
makes it worse after. It did last year. I couldn't bring a white wife up
here."
"Well, sir, it's a problem," said Peter with a weighty shake of the head.
This serious, sentimental kind of talk was a strain on both partners.
Ambrose made haste to drop the subject.
"I believe I'll start the new warehouse to-morrow," he said. "I like to
work with logs. First, I must measure the ground and make a working
plan."
Peter was not sorry to be diverted. "Hadn't we better get lumber from
the 'Company' mill?" he suggested. "Looks like up to date somehow."
"A board shack looks rotten in the woods?" said Ambrose.
"You're so gol-durn artistic," said Peter quizzically.
Minot & Doane's store was a long log shack with a sod roof sprouting a
fine crop of weeds. The original shack had been added to on one side,
then on the other. There was a pleasing diversity of outline in the main
building and its wings. The whole crouched low on the ground as
though for warmth.
Three crooked little windows and three doors so low that a short man

had to duck his head under the lintels, faced the lake. The middle door
gave ingress to the store proper; the door on the right was the entrance
to Peter Minot's household quarters; while that on the left opened to a
large room used variously for stores and bunks.
Farther to the left stood the little shack that housed Ambrose Doane in
bachelor solitude, and a few steps beyond, the long, low, log stable for
the use of the freighters in winter.
Seen from the lake the low, spreading buildings in the rough clearing
among gigantic pines were not unpleasing. Rough as they were, they
fulfilled the first aim of all architecture; they were suitable to the site.
The traveler by water landed on a stony beach, climbed a low bank and
followed a crooked path to the door of the store. On either hand potato
and onion patches flourished among the stumps.
From the door-sill where the partners sat, the farther shore of the lake
could be seen merely as a delicate line of tree tops poised in the air.
Off to the right their own shore made out in a shallow, sweeping curve,
ending half a mile away in a bold hill-point where the Company's post
of Fort Moultrie had stood for two hundred years commanding the
western end of the lake and its outlet, Great Buffalo River.
To one who should compare the outward aspects of the two
establishments, Minot & Doane's offered a ludicrous contrast to the
imposing white buildings of Fort Moultrie, arranged military-wise on
the grassy promontory; nevertheless, as is not infrequently the case
elsewhere, the humbler store did the larger trade.
The coming of Peter Minot ten years before had worked a kind of
revolution in the country. He had brought war into the very stronghold
of the arrogant fur monopoly, and had succeeded in establishing
himself next door. The results were far-reaching. Formerly the Indian
sat humbly on the step with his furs until the trader was pleased to open
his door; whereas now when the Indian landed, the trader ran down the
hill with outstretched hand.

Far and wide Minot & Doane were known as the "free-traders"; and
some of their customers journeyed for three hundred miles to trade in
the little log store.
The partners were roused by a shrill hail from up the shore. Grateful for
the interruption, they hastened to the edge of the bank.
Summer is the dull season in the fur trade. Most of the firm's customers
were "pitching off" among the hills, and visitors were rare enough to be
notable.
"Poly Goussard," said Ambrose after an instant's examination of the
dug-out nosing alongshore. Ambrose's keenness of vision was already
known in a land of keen-eyed men.
"Taking his woman to see her folks," added Peter.
Soon the long, slender canoe grounded on the stones below them. It
contained in addition to all the worldly goods of the family, a swarthy
French half-breed, his Cree wife and three coppery infants in pink
calico sunbonnets.
The man climbing over his family indiscriminately, landed and came
up the bank with outstretched hand. The woman and children remained
sitting like statues in their narrow craft, staring unwinkingly at