WE TRADE WITH INDIANS 



To hausen seemed sincere in his efforts to be- 

 friend Tom and, so far as he could, kept Tom in- 

 formed; but for obvious reasons he had to be secret 

 about it. Not much going and coming between 

 the two bands was to be expected, however, for 

 the weather was still quite severe and stormy a 

 great part of the time, the distance between the 

 two camps considerable, and Indian ponies at this 

 season of the year were poor and weak. 



In our traffic with the old chiefs people we had 

 given them a liberal exchange for their skins and 

 peltries — far more than they would have received 

 from the traders — we being satisfied with about 

 one hundred per cent, profit on the goods we traded 

 them instead of three to four hundred per cent, as 

 was the custom with men regularly engaged in the 

 trade. 



The Indians were not slow to see that we were 

 giving them more for their stuff than they usually 

 received from the traders, and our commerce with 

 them increased. Soon we found that we were 

 gathering in so much of this material that it be- 

 came a serious question how we were going to 

 smuggle it into our storeroom at Fort Larned, or 

 beyond there, without Weisselbaum's knowledge, 

 or, in case we sold our skins to him, how to ac- 

 count for those we had traded from the Indians. 

 He had a trader's license from the government, 

 and we had nothing of the kind. According to 

 law, we were trespassing on his rights, in which 



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