s not Behrens; he iss not Colville; he iss not
Douglas. And I say to you, as I learned last night--you see, they asked
me also to tell what I knew of Oregon--I say to you that last night
McLaughlin was deposed. He iss in charge no more--so soon as they can
get word to him, he loses his place at Vancouver."

"After a lifetime in the service!" I commented.

"Yess, after a lifetime; and McLaughlin had brain and heart, too. If
England would listen to him, she would learn sometings. He plants, he
plows, he bass gardens and mills and houses and herds. Yess, if they let
McLaughlin alone, they would haf a civilization on the Columbia, and not
a fur-trading post. Then they could oppose your civilization there.
That iss what he preaches. Simpson preaches otherwise. Simpson loses
Oregon to England, it may be."

"You know much about affairs out in Oregon," I ventured again. "Now, I
did not happen to be present at the little meeting last night."

"I heard it all," he remarked carelessly, "until I went to sleep. I wass
bored. I care not to hear of the splendor of England!"

"Then you think there is a chance of trouble between our country and
England, out there?"

He smiled. "It iss not a chance, but a certainty," he said. "Those
settlers will not gif up. And England is planning to push them out!"

"We had not heard that!" I ventured.

"It wass only agreed last night. England will march this summer seven
hundred men up the Peace River. In the fall they will be across the
Rockies. So! They can take boats easily down the streams to Oregon. You
ask if there will be troubles. I tell you, yess."

"And which wins, my friend?" I feared he would hear my heart thumping at
this news.

"If you stop where you are, England wins. If you keep on going over the
mountains England shall lose."

"What time can England make with her brigades, west-bound, my friend?" I
asked him casually. He answered with gratifying scientific precision.

"From Edmonton to Fort Colville, west of the Rockies, it hass been done
in six weeks and five days, by Sir George himself. From Fort Colville
down it iss easy by boats. It takes the _voyageur_ three months to
cross, or four months. It would take troops twice that long, or more.
For you in the States, you can go faster. And, ah! my friend, it iss
worth the race, that Oregon. Believe me, it iss full of bugs--of new
bugs; twelve new species I haf discovered and named. It iss sometings of
honor, iss it not?"