GREATEST FUR COMPANY OF THE WORLD 257 



toothless requests for something to eat or something to wear, 

 for tobacco, the solace of Indian woes, or what is next best — tea. 



Among so many guests are many needs. One half-breed from 

 a far wintering outpost, where perhaps a white man and this guide 

 are living in a chinked shack awaiting a hunting party's return, 

 arrives at the fort with frozen feet. Little Labree's feet must be 

 thawed out, and sometimes little Labree dies under the process, 

 leaving as a legacy to the chief factor the death-bed pledge that the 

 corpse be taken to a distant tribal burying-ground. And no 

 matter how inclement the winter, the chief factor keeps his pledge, 

 for the integrity of a promise is the only law in the fur trader's 

 realm. Special attentions, too, must be paid those old retainers 

 who have acted as mentors of the fort in times of trouble. 



A few years ago it would not have been safe to give this treat 

 inside of fort walls. Rations would have been served through loop- 

 holes and the feast held outside the gates ; but so faithfully have 

 the Indians become bound to the Hudson's Bay Company there are 

 not any forts in the fur territory where Indians must be excluded. 



Of the feast little need be said. Like the camel, the Indian 

 lays up store for the morrow, judging from his capacity for weeks 

 of morrows. His benefactor no more dines with him than a planta- 

 tion master of the South would have dined with feasting slaves. 

 Elsewhere a bell calls the company officers to breakfast at 7.30, dinner 

 at 1, supper at 7. Officers dine first, white hunters and trappers 

 second, that difference between master and servant being main- 

 tained which is part of the company's almost military discipline. 

 In the large forts are libraries, whither resort the officers for the 

 long winter nights. But over the feast wild hilarity reigns. 



A French-Canadian fiddler strikes up a tuneless jig that sets 

 the Indians pounding the floor in figureless dances with moccasined 

 heels till mid-day glides into midnight and midnight to morning. 

 I remember hearing of one such mid-day feast in Red River settle- 

 ment that prolonged itself past four of the second morning. Against 

 the walls sit old folks spinning yarns of the past. There is a print 



