had won for me among the Indians.
"Gray Moose will not forget. Now let white man go his way."

But it was not in my nature to leave the poor wretch wounded and
helpless, and I told him so. On questioning him, I learned that a
village of his people was within a few miles, and I decided to take him
there. By this time Baptiste had arrived with the team, and after
dressing the Sioux's injuries as well as I could, I fixed him
comfortably on the sledge, the half-breed and I shouldering the
displaced part of the load.

On the way my servant had picked up the broken musket, and when Gray
Moose saw that the weapon was beyond mending--the grizzly had shattered
it by a terrific blow--such a look of misery came into his eyes as
softened my heart at once. I knew the value an Indian set on his
shooting-piece, and I gave him an extra gun which I chanced to have on
the sledge.

Baptiste upbraided me for my folly, and, indeed, I repented the act the
next moment; but the savage's gratitude was so sincere that I could not
bring myself to take back the gift.

An hour's tramp--the direction was quite out of our way--brought us to
the Sioux village. We left Gray Moose with his friends, and pushed on,
refusing an invitation to spend the night. I attached no significance to
the affair at the time, nor did I give it much thought afterward, but
the future was destined to prove that my trivial dead of kindness was
not wasted, and that even a bad Indian will remember a benefactor.

I need make no further mention of our journey through the wilderness to
Quebec, where we arrived safely in a little less than four weeks. But at
this point, for the better understanding of my narrative, I must set
down a brief statement of the ugly and threatening situation in the
Canadas at the period of which I write. Long before--during many years,
in fact--the Hudson Bay Company had vainly tried to obtain from the
English Parliament a confirmation of the charter granted them by Charles
II. But Parliament refused to decide the matter in one way or the other,
and on the strength of this a number of French and Scotch merchants of
Upper Canada formed themselves into the Northwest Trading Company in
1783. They established posts here and there, and in 1804 they erected
one on the very shore of Hudson's Bay.

Within the next few years their forts grew to outnumber those of the
older company, being scattered about in Prince Rupert's Land, and even
across the Rocky