Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/18

. So neither Ralph Lander nor any other man in the year 1831 could know what a blow inventive genius was to deal the beaver trade two years hence.

Lander knew changes must take place, but he could vision nothing to prevent him from becoming a mountain man, a king of the Missouri. His ideal was Ashley, the implacable rival of the A. F. C. It was Ashley who brought romance to the fur trade and set a new pace by doing away with fixed posts and by sending large bodies of trappers into the beaver country to trap and trade. With Ashley had been associated such men as William L. and Milton Sublette, whose grandfather is credited with slaying Tecumseh at the battle of the Thames, James P. Beckwourth and James Bridger. The A. F. C, clinging to the traditions and practises of the British companies, was hard put to meet the growing opposition of these celebrated mountain men. Diluted alcohol was being exchanged—contrary to law of the country—for buffalo robes at the rate of a pint for a robe.

Ashley's tactics, followed by his successors, did not pivot on the efficiency of the Indian. His own trappers caught the furs. While the A. F. C. could easily retain a monopoly of the robe