Adventure, November 1915 — page 123: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Posts from the day of the company’s inception. And off in the darkened council-hall with its half-open door, Masita and her father heard with swelling indignation, aversion, hate and disgust Helbaud’s rhapsody upon the corporation of the Arctic Fur. Yet although his rhapsody was a rhap- sody in its essence, wild, unconnected, bombastic, verging on impudence, there was the essence of grim truth underlying all his statements. For he had strongly established his intention of taking possession of the Valley of the Kaniapiskau, and that meant all the hinterland, and he likewise threatened to sweep the free-traders—ever a thorn in Ivan Trevor’s side—off the dis- trict or absorb them into his own concern. It was the critical stage. Helbaud had fixed his eye on Dubawni Post, the strongest free-trading post in the North, a post which Ivan Trevor had tolerated because he thought to buy it in the end without resort to force. If Helbaud enticed Dubawni, or coerced him into the Arctic Fur Company, he increased his strength one hundredfold, for it was plain that the eye of every free- trader in the North was fixed upon the independent Frenchman.- They awaited his word and his move, for he was a power among them, and their trade lived or died with him. Did he submit quietly to the overbearing Helbaud, they would swallow the bitter medicine and follow. But did he resist, they were ready to flock to his aid and strike with him. Thus a double danger confronted Ivan Trevor and compelled him >to take swift action. Although Helbaud congratulated him- self on the secrecy of his projects, the eye of the Chimo Factor was on him. By the use of spies he had kept in touch with Helbaud’s gradual advance northward over the Height of Land into the country he claimed for his company, and in the Spring he found it necessary to come south to get an accurate estimate of the Arctic Fur’s true strength, their Montreal trade, their Manikuagan base and also to personally muster the men of the Hudson’s. Bay Posts on the St. Lawrence Gulf to his aid. The men of his Northern posts were concen- trated at Chimo, and with these, reinforced. by the forces from the south, he planned to come to grips with Helbaud across the Height of Land. of Pillage 12! as well as in wine and foretold to his asso- AND Helbaud, knowing nothing of Ivan Trevor’s vigilance, activity — and proximity, wassailed in dreams ciates how before six months the Arctic — Fur Company would rule the Northland. - “For see,’ Masita and Dubawni heard him declaim, as he pounded the table with the bottom of his glass, “‘the trade this year __ = runs to two millions all told. Next year with the traffic of the free-traders it will be fs four, and the year after that, with the trade of the Hudson’s Bay Company it will be ten. “And after that—after that—”’ Helbaud embraced the company about the disorderly board with the smile of an overlord and the eye of a seer—‘“‘there is no telling what it will be. The Hudson’s Bay farms at a waste. Their methods are old and obj— obt—what the devil is that word? Ah, obsolete! Obsolete, messieurs, obsolete as perdition! I, I will show my company partners where a hundred millions in furs and fish and whales and ivory can be har- vested from a barren land.” Uproariously his comrades applauded the prophecy and declared that the estimate was small. The Hudson’s Bay? Mon Dieu, they gave figures for their year’s profit, but was the half ever disclosed? They importuned Helbaud to give his opinion as to the half ever being disclosed, and he pondered gravely a second or two and addressed them with a knowing shake of his sleek-haired head. “T was once at the George River Post, when the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ship failed to get through the straits on account of the ice-pack. The posts on Ungava Bay had to go without supplies that year, and the London markets went without the furs. The bales of furs were held over till another year. But do you think the value of them was in- © | cluded in that year’s estimate? No. Norin the estimates of the last. Those furs were of no year, and their value was not disclosed. “That ice-pack affected all the Labrador posts, and I ask you, how often do things like that occur? Every yeaf. Somewhere, every year, and, as you say, the half of the profit has never been told. There is that undisclosed profit to add to the one hundred millions, and who knows but when I have my hands upon it all I shall control two hundred millions of trade, or three, or four, or maybe half a billion. Think of it; messieurs, and, messieurs—drink to it. IL Gomichbooks