“What’s the matter with the mankiller?”

“Broke,” was the laconic answer.  “We fix it.  Every day it break again.  Now it is all broke.”

“Well, every family will have to grind for themselves,” said Ambrose.

Simon shrugged.  “We have a new trouble here.”

“What is it?” Ambrose anxiously demanded.

“The Kakisa Indians,” Simon said.  “They are the biggest tribe around this post, and the best fur bringers.  They live beside the Kakisa River, hundred fifty miles northwest.

“All summer they come in two or six or twenty and get a little flour, little sugar, tea, tobacco from me.  They want to trade with you because Gaviller is hard to them like us.  They are good hunters, but he keep them poor.

“In the late summer they come all together to get a fall outfit.  They are here now.  They want a hundred bags of flour.  They come to me.  I say I have got no flour.  They go to the fort.

“Gaviller say; ’Ambrose Doane bought all the grain.  You want to trade with him; all right.  Make him sell you flour now.’

“They are here a week now—­sixty teepees.  I feed them what I can.  It is not much.  They are ongry.  They begin to talk ugly.”

Ambrose would not let Simon see that he was in any way dismayed by this situation.  “Where are the Indians camped?” he asked coolly.

“Mile and a half down river.  Across from the fort.”

“Very well,” said Ambrose.  “Tell them at your house to keep watch here until Tole and Germain come with the raft.  Six men should be ready to help them land and unload.  You come with me in the dugout, and we will go down and talk to the Indians.”

A gleam of approval shot from under Simon’s beetle brows.  “Good!” he said.  “You go straight to a thing.  I like that, me!”

Ambrose found the teepee village set up in the form of a square on a grassy flat beside the river.  The quadrangle was filled with the usual confusion of loose horses, quarrelsome dogs, and screaming children.

Simon called his attention to a teepee in the middle of the northerly side distinguished by its size and by gaudy paintings on the canvas.

“Head man’s lodge,” he said.  “Name Joey Providence Watusk.”

“A good mouthful,” said Ambrose.

“Joey for English, Providence for French, Watusk for Kakisa,” explained Simon.

He called a boy to him, and made him understand that they wished to see the head man.

“I send a message that we are coming,” he explained to Ambrose.  “He lak to be treated lak big man.  It is no harm when you are trading with them.”

Ambrose agreed.  “So this what’s-his-name fancies himself,” he remarked while they waited.

“It is so,” said Simon, grimly.  “Thinks he is a king!  All puff up with wind lak a bull frog.  He mak’ me mad with his foolishness.  What would you?  You cannot deal with the Kakisas only what he say.  Because only Watusk speaks English.  He does what he wants.”