186 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



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 bury- 

 ing-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 the 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 three 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 plantation master of the 

 South would have dined with feasting slaves. Else 

 where 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 maintained which is part of 

 the company s almost military discipline. In the large 

 forts are libraries, whither resort the officers for the 



