While trading furs at St. Louis, on one occasion, he offered a remnant of his stock to a dealer with whom he was not acquainted.  They had an argument as to prices.  The dealer, a man of hasty temper, asked him his name.

“Walker,” was the reply.

When La Marche arose from the distant corner into which he was projected in company with the bundle of furs levelled at his head, revenge was his natural sentiment.  Drawing his heavy knife from its sheath, he flung it away:  the temptation to use it might have been too much for him.  Small in stature, but remarkable for muscular strength, and for inventive resource in the “rough-and-tumble” fight, La Marche clenched with the burly store-keeper, who was getting the worst of it, when some of his employes interfered.  This led to a general engagement.  Several of La Marche’s companions now rushed in, and in five minutes their opponents gave out, succumbent to superior wind and sinew.

Next morning, when the trappers took their way out of St. Louis, La Marche was a leader among them for life.  But the reason of the store-keeper’s rage was for many years a mystery to him.  He knew not the enormity of “Walker,” as an exponent of disparagement; he simply thought it a nicer name than La Marche, while it fully embodied the sentiment of that name.  He adopted it, then, as I said before, and went on towards posterity as Peter Walker.

I heard many strange anecdotes of Peter Walker at the residence of a retired voyageur, who used to sing him Homerically to his chosen friends.  These voyageurs are professional canoe-men; adventurers extending, sparsely, from the waters of French Canada to those of Oregon,—­and sometimes back.  Honest old Quatreaux!  I mentioned his “residence” just now, and the term is truly grandiloquent in its application.  The residence of old Quatreaux was a log cabane, about twenty feet square.  Planks, laid loosely upon the cross-ties of the rafters, formed the up-stairs of the building:  up-ladder would be a term more in accordance with facts; for it was by an appliance of that kind that the younger and more active of the sixteen members composing the old voyageur’s family removed themselves from view when they retired for the night.  A partition, extending half-way across the ground-floor, screened off the state or principal bed from outside gaze; at least, it was exposed to view only from points rendered rather inaccessible by tubs, with which these Canadian families are generally provided to excess.  This apartment was strictly assigned to me, as a visitor; and although I firmly declined the honor,—­chiefly with reference to certain large and very hard fleas I knew of in its dormitory arrangements,—­it was kept religiously vacant, in case my heart should relent towards it, and the family in general slept huddled together on the outer floor, without manifest classification:  the two old people; son and wife; daughter and husband; children; the extraordinary little hunch-backed and one-eyed girl, whom nobody would marry, but everybody liked; dogs.  I used to stretch myself on a buffalo-robe before the wood-fire, in company with a faithful spaniel, who was as wakeful on these occasions as if he suspected that the low-bred curs of the establishment might pick his pockets.