“Monday, April 10th--The strangers have paid me a visit. I had a busy day settling old scores with them and more to my satisfaction and the Company’s than last year’s disaster. We received from them eight thousand one hundred and seventy-two beaver in payment of their debts due the company and two notes of hand from Mr. Monton. _We secured all the beaver they had._ Our deserters are tired of their new masters and will soon return to us. How the Americans make profit when they pay $3.00 per pound for beaver, I cannot imagine. Within ten months the Indians have stolen one hundred and eighty traps from these Americans.” In those few words, does Peter Skene Ogden record an episode that has puzzled the West for fifty years. How did these Americans come to sell all the beaver they had to him, at less than they had paid, for the Hudson’s Bay Company never paid $3.00 a beaver? Were they short of powder as well as traps? And what old score was Ogden paying off? What had happened to him the year before? Was that the year when the Americans stampeded his horses? The record of Ogden’s 1824-25 trip has been either lost or destroyed, and the Americans’ version of the story was very vague. General Ashley’s hunters had gone up from St. Louis and were in the mountains destitute. Suddenly, they met Ogden’s brigade on the banks of the Snake north of Salt Lake. When the rival hunters parted, Ogden was destitute and the Americans had Hudson’s Bay furs variously valued at from $75,000 to $350,000--a variation accounted for by the fact that the St. Louis traders valued beaver five times higher than the Hudson’s Bay. The legend is that Ogden’s men were demoralized by laudanum and whiskey. He acknowledges that twenty-eight of his men deserted. If the deserters took their furs with them, the transaction is explained. The Hudson’s Bay would be out of pocket not only the furs but the hunting outfit to the men. Ashley’s record of the matter was that he got “a fortune in furs for a song.” Whatever the explanation, Ogden now scored off the grudge. He took the entire hunt from his rivals and exacted two promissory notes for former debts.