barks and curses follows, for the huskies celebrate their arrival by
tangling themselves up in their harness and enjoying a free fight.

Dogs unharnessed, in troop the trappers to the banquet-hall, flinging
packs of tightly roped peltries down promiscuously, to be sorted next
day. One Indian enters just as he has left the hunting-field, clad from
head to heel in white caribou with the antlers left on the capote as a
decoy. His squaw has togged out for the occasion in a comical medley of
brass bracelets and finger-rings, with a bear's claw necklace and ermine
ruff which no city connoisseur could possibly mistake for rabbit. If a
daughter yet remain unappropriated she will display the gayest
attire--red flannel galore, red shawl, red scarf, with perhaps an apron
of white fox-skin and moccasins garnished in coloured grasses. The
braves outdo even a vain young squaw. Whole fox, mink, or otter skins
have been braided to the end of their hair, and hang down in two plaits
to the floor. Whitest of buckskin has been ornamented with brightest of
beads, and over all hangs the gaudiest of blankets, it may be a
musk-ox-skin with the feats of the warrior set forth in rude drawings on
the smooth side.

Children and old people, too, come to the feast, for the Indian's
stomach is the magnet that draws his soul. Grotesque little figures the
children are, with men's trousers shambling past their heels,
rabbit-skin coats with the fur turned in, and on top of all some old
stovepipe hat or discarded busby coming half-way down to the urchin's
neck. The old people have more resemblance to parchment on gnarled
sticks than to human beings. They shiver under dirty blankets with every
sort of cast-off rag tied about their limbs, hobbling lame from frozen
feet or rheumatism, mumbling toothless requests for something to eat or
something to wear, 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
burying-ground. And no matter how inclement the winter, the chief factor
keeps his pledge, for the integrity of a prom