smile of grim satisfaction, tossed the ax
upon the ground.

"There is one consignment of firewater that will never be delivered,"
he said.

"What does it mean?" asked Chloe, and Lapierre noticed that her eyes
were alight with interest. "Who is this MacNair, and----"

For answer Lapierre took her gently by the arm and led her back to the
log.

"MacNair," he began, "is the most atrocious tyrant that ever breathed.
Like myself, he is a free-trader--that is, he is not in the employ of
the Hudson Bay Company. He is rich, and owns a permanent post of his
own, to the northward, on Snare Lake, while I vend my wares under God's
own canopy, here and there upon the banks of lakes and rivers."

"But why should he attack you?"

The man shrugged. "Why? Because he hates me. He hates any one who
deals fairly with the Indians. His own Indians, a band of the Yellow
Knives, together with an onscouring of Tantsawhoots, Beavers, Dog-ribs,
Strongbows, Hares, Brushwoods, Sheep, and Huskies, he holds in abject
peonage. Year in and year out he forces them to dig in his mines for
their bare existence. Over on the Athabasca they call him Brute
MacNair, and among the Loucheaux and Huskies he is known as
The-Bad-Man-of-the-North.

"He pays no cash for labour, nor for fur, and he sees to it that his
Indians are always hopelessly in his debt. He trades them whiskey.
They are his. His to work, and to cheat, and to debauch, and to vent
his rage upon--for his passions are the wild, unbridled passions of the
fighting wolf. He kills! He maims! Or he allows to live! The
Indians are his, body and soul. Their wives and their children are
his. He owns them. _He_ is the law!

"He warned me out of the North. I ignored that warning. The land is
broad and free. There is room for all, therefore I brought in my goods
and traded. And, because I refused to grind the poor savages under the
iron heel of oppression, because I offer a meagre trifle over and above
what is necessary for their bare existence, the brute hates me. He
came upon me at Fort Rae, and there, in the presence of the factor, his
clerk, and his chief trader, he fell upon me and beat me so that for
three days I lay unable to travel."

"But the others!" interrupted the girl, "the factor and his men! Why
did they allow it?"

Again the gleam of hate flashed in the man's eyes. "They allowed it
because they are in league with him. They fear him. They fear his
hold up