“More,” shouts Long. “Come on then,” throwing the doors wide open and rolling across the entrance a keg of gunpowder from which he knocks the lid. “One step across the door and we all perish together,” cocking his pistol straight for the powder. Pell-mell off dashed the terrified Indians paddling canoes as fast as drunken arms could work the blades. Another time, Long discovers that his Indian guide is only awaiting a favorable chance to assassinate him. A bottle of drugged liquor puts the assassin to sleep and another Indian with a tomahawk prevents him ever awakening. When Long retires, Duncan Cameron, son of a royalist in the American Revolution, comes to command Nipigon. Cameron pushes on up stream past Nipigon two hundred miles to the English post Osnaburg, where the Hudson’s Bay man, Goodwin, welcomes the Nor’Wester--a rival is safer indoors than out, especially when he has no visible goods; but Cameron manages to speak with the Indians during his visit and when he departs they follow him back to the place where he has _cached_ his goods and the trade takes place. Henceforth traders of the Nipigon do not stay in the fort on the lake but range the woods drumming up trade from Abbittibbi east, to Albany west. Meanwhile, what are the brigades of Fort William doing? Fifteen days at the most it takes for the “goers and comers” of Montreal to exchange their cargo of provisions for the Northerners’ cargo of furs. When the big canoes head back for the East at the end of July, the Montreal partners go with them. Smaller canoes, easier to portage and in more numerous brigades, set out for the West with the wintering partners. These are “the wolves of the North”--the MacKenzies and Henry and Harmon and Fraser and a dozen others--each to command a wilderness empire the size of a France or a Germany. By the new route of Kaministiquia, it is only a day’s paddling beyond the first long portage to the height of land. Beyond this, the canoes launch down stream, gliding with the current and “somerseting” or shooting the smaller rapids, portaging when the fall of water is too turbulent. Wherever there is a long portage there stands a half-way house--wayside inn of logs and thatch roof where some stray Frenchman sells fresh food to the voyageurs--a great nuisance to the impatient partners, for the men pause to parley. First of the labyrinthine waterways that weave a chain between Lake Superior and Lake Winnipeg is Rainy River, flowing northwest to Lake of the Woods, or Lake of the Isles as the French called it. On Rainy River are the ruins of an old fort of the French traders. Here the Northbound brigades often meet the Athabasca canoes which can seldom come down all the way as far as Fort William and go back to Athabasca before winter. Again an exchange of goods takes place, and the Athabasca men head back with the Northbound brigades.