WE-NEN-GWAY. 299 



That settled the trading, but when I saw the old chief 

 again he wanted to know, in confidence, if we had any 

 whiskey left. I doubt if a single Indian believed that six 

 white men, who had so many things they thought to be 

 luxuries, spent half the winter in the woods without 

 whiskey. To them it seemed an absurd proposition. 

 The Indians who hung around trading posts were not 

 of the best class, and had readily copied all the vices of 

 the white man from a class whose virtues were not so 

 apparent. They had not then adopted the white man's 

 dress except the calico or the flannel shirt. They wore 

 the breech-clout and leggings, a shirt and the invariable 

 blanket. 



When we were up along the river we were near the 

 great northern trail from the Red River of the North, and 

 Henry said that the mail was due in a day or two, so he 

 had heard from a half-breed. 'This mail," said he, 

 "comes down in a dog sledge, and if we can put out some 

 pieces of pork in the snow you'll see some fun." 



That did seem the proper thing to do, and in fact it 

 was the only way possible to extract any fun out of a dog 

 train, and we planted pieces of pork at intervals of one 

 hundred feet, more or less, and waited. It was next 

 morning before we heard the driver calling to his dogs 

 a long way off, for sound travels far in the cold and over 

 snow. On he came, with five wolfish-looking dogs har- 

 nessed tandem, with rawhides traces and soft collars, to 

 a flat-bottomed sledge made of thin birch boards turned 

 up in front, and lashed together with thongs and covered 

 with a skin tied over all, and without runners. The 

 driver ran beside the team, touching a dog here and there 

 with a long lash fastened to a handle about one foot long. 

 The leader struck a piece of pork, and in a moment four 

 dogs were on him fighting for it, and the harness was all 



