Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/97

 mouth of the James the boating would be easier than on the lower river.

Lander was decided to stick to the boat as the long reaches of the mighty stream fascinated him. In the fall of the previous year Kenneth McKenzie, the greatest trader ever employed by the A. F. C., whose name will always be associated with the Upper Missouri outfit stationed at Fort Union above the Yellowstone, wrote to the New York headquarters of the company that the steamboat "would permit of their keeping their men in the Indian country and paying the greater part of their wages in merchandise instead of in cash." In other words the company planned to pay wages in merchandise at three and four hundred per cent. advance on the cost. Lander had heard this plan talked over at the store and might have hesitated to go up-river as an engagé for the company. But going by boat up-river to Fort Pierre and ultimately joining Bridger in the mountains was a different proposition and his soul kindled to it.

Could he have but known it Lander was two years inside the beginning of that period of invasion of the great trans-Mississippi territory. Of course there had been journeyings to the