Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/280

 the order. Bridger produced it and the nabob of the river read it carefully; then gravely informed:

"Perfectly correct, Mr. Bridger. I gave him authority to draw orders on St. Louis in case a man isn't coming here. Had he known you were coming to Fort Union he would have left the order for me to draw.

"I'm glad to have you turn the robes in to us. We deal in a big way. I'll get ten thousand robes from the Blackfeet next season.

"When I sent A. J. Tulloch to the Crows I told him to get them into the habit of trading—to trade them for anything they had. He went to the Yellowstone and some of his men were killed by a war-party of Blackfeet while they were chopping wood.

"He stuck and traded the Crows. His first returns made our men here laugh until they were sick. Hardly anything but elk and deer horns. Yet his trade on the whole was profitable because the A. F. C. can handle anything. That's why the Indians like us; we'll trade for anything they've got."

"Phinny isn't here."

"You must have passed him. Probably he was