From time to time, they
bring the peltries they have collected to the trading houses of the
company in whose employ they have been brought up. Here they traffic
them away for such articles of merchandise or ammunition as they may
stand in need of. At the time when Montreal was the great emporium of
the fur trader, one of these freemen of the wilderness would suddenly
return, after an absence of many years, among his old friends and
comrades. He would be greeted as one risen from the dead; and with the
greater welcome, as he returned flush of money. A short time, however,
spent in revelry, would be sufficient to drain his purse and sate
him with civilized life, and he would return with new relish to the
unshackled freedom of the forest.
Numbers of men of this class were scattered throughout the northwest
territories. Some of them retained a little of the thrift and
forethought of the civilized man, and became wealthy among their
improvident neighbors; their wealth being chiefly displayed in large
bands of horses, which covered the prairies in the vicinity of their
abodes. Most of them, however, were prone to assimilate to the red man
in their heedlessness of the future.
Such was Regis Brugiere, a freeman and rover of the wilderness. Having
been brought up in the service of the Northwest Company, he had followed
in the train of one of its expeditions across the Rocky Mountains, and
undertaken to trap for the trading post established on the Spokan River.
Pages:
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161