Page:The Conquest.djvu/406

 Making a powder-horn," he said. "Goin' to hunt on the Fork in the Fall."

A hundred miles up the Kansas he had often set his traps, but Boone's legs were getting shaky, his eyes were growing dim. Every day now he tried his coffin,—it was shining and polished and fair, of the wood he loved best, the cherry. People came for miles to look at Boone's coffin.

XV

TOO GOOD TO THE INDIANS

Manuel Lisa had out-distanced all his competitors in the fur trade. But the voice of envy whispered, "Manuel must cheat the Government, and Manuel must cheat the Indians, otherwise Manuel could not bring down every summer so many boats loaded with rich furs."

"Good!" exclaimed Lisa to Governor Clark, when the fleets were tying up at St. Louis in 1817. "My accounts with the Government will show whether I receive anything out of which to cheat it."

"I have not blamed you, Manuel," explained the Governor. "On the contrary I have conveyed to the Government my high appreciation of your very great services in quieting the Indians of the Missouri. It is not necessary to worry yourself with the talk of babblers who do not understand."

"Cheat the Indians!" The Spaniard stamped the floor. "The respect and friendship which they have for me, the security of my possessions in the heart of their country, respond to this charge, and declare with voices louder than the tongues of men that it cannot be true.

"'But Manuel gets so much rich fur.'" Lisa ground out the words with scorn.

"Well, I will explain how I get it. First I put into my operations great activity,—I go a gr