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 "To-morrow I tell you." And the erect figure of the treaty-chief of the Kabenakagami Ojibways disappeared through the door.

Later McDuff and Gordon sat smoking after-supper pipes in the factor's quarters.

"There's no doubt in your mind, Cameron, that old David is the best man you've got for our business?" asked McDuff.

"There are others trading at this post who trap the Kabenakagami country above and below David's hunting-grounds, but if your map is correct the preliminary survey runs through the country he has travelled all his life. He's the man you want and he's he most intelligent Indian that trades at this post. That's why he's treaty-chief."

"I guess you're right, but it don't seem possible that Stevens could have made such a bull on the Flaming River survey. Why, it may mean running a new line thirty or forty miles."

"I don't care," maintained the factor. "If David says your map is off, you can gamble your life that it is."

"Well, we've got to go and find out."

Down on the lake shore across the post clearing where already stood scattered tepees of Ojibways in for the spring trade, the occasional laugh of an Indian girl or yelp of a husky dog alone broke the hush of the June twilight. Each day, now, from north and cast and west, would bring to the post the canoes of fur-hunters, freighted with noisy cargoes of children