One morning he found all his food stolen from his handcart.  Either Indians or wolves had taken it.  He now saw how foolish his boyish plan had been.  He turned back, and at last reached a trading post, almost starved to death.  For days he had had little to eat except such frogs as he could catch.

After this the Indians always called him
“The-man-that-draws-the-handcart.”

As he grew older, he became a famous trapper and guide.  He knew all about the habits of animals.  He could shoot with a better aim than any Indian or any other white man on the frontier.  He often walked eighty miles in a day across the prairie.  He could manage the Indians as no other man could.

This strange young man lived among rough and wicked men.  But he never drank or swore, or did anything that anybody could have thought wrong.  He never even smoked, as other men about him did, but he lived his own life in his own way.  Everybody loved him for his gentleness.  Everybody admired him for his courage and manliness.  All the spare money he got he spent for good books.

When winter time came, he would sometimes hire other trappers, who did not know the country so well as he did, to work for him.  He would go away beyond the settlements and set up a camp.  He would teach the other men how to trap.  When spring came, he would bring many furs into the settlement.  One winter he camped in the country of the Yankton Indians.  He had six men with him.  The Yanktons were wild Indians, and Northrup was in some danger.  But he had a friend among the Indians, a chief called by a good long name, Taw-ton-wash-tah.

But all the Yanktons were not friendly to the white men.  There was one chief whose name was Old-man.  He got together a party to go and rob Northrup and drive him away.  Taw-ton-wash-tah tried to keep these Indians from going, but he could not do it.

Northrup did not know that a party had been sent out against him.  His men went on with their trapping, while George went hunting to get food for them.  They had only a small bag of flour, and this they did not eat.  They kept the flour for a time that might come in which they could not find any animals to kill for meat.

One day George followed the tracks of an elk.  He overtook it six miles from his camp.  He crept up to it and shot it.  Then he loaded his gun, so as to be ready for anything that might happen.  While he was skinning the elk, he looked up and saw the heads of Indians coming up over a little hill.  He quickly jumped into the bushes.  He saw that there were thirteen Indians in the party.  He put his hand on his bullet pouch, and knew by the feeling of it that there were fifteen bullets in the bag.  “Every bullet must bring down an Indian,” he said to himself.

One of the Indians called out in his own language, “Is The-man-that-draws-the-handcart here?”

George quickly replied in their language, “Stop!  If any man comes one step nearer, I will kill him.  Tell me whether this is a war party or a hunting party.”