THE FREE TRADER. 19 



alcohol, a few cheap gilt watches, some fancy 

 ribbons, colored shawls and imitation meer- 

 schaum pipes, and if they found their bundles 

 would bear a little more weight, they generally 

 put in a little more "whiskey." They could al- 

 most always "dead-head" their way up the line 

 on a construction train. Any place where they 

 saw a few camps of Indians or half-breeds they 

 dropped off with their stock in trade. 



Such Indians as they found along the line 

 were not hunters but they could act as guides 

 to the Free Trader, and for a gaudy shawl or a 

 few bottles of whiskey he could generally enlist 

 one of them in his service. With an old canoe 

 (furnished by the Indian) some flour, pork, tea 

 and sugar, they could push their way up some 

 river to a favorable point known by the Indian, 

 and wait the canoes of trappers coming down 

 on their way to one of the Hudson Bay posts at 

 the mouth of the rivers. 



The route of the railway cutting the large 

 navigable rivers at right angles, at some parts 

 of the line, as much as a couple of hundred miles 

 inland of our posts gave the Free Traders a 

 great advantage as they could intercept the In- 

 dians coming down from the height of land. 

 Even to those Indians who had never tasted 

 liquor the very word "fire-water" had a charm 

 and an allurement not to be resisted. Probably 



