Of all the Nor’Westers stationed at Pembina, Henry was one of the most famous. Cheek by jowl with the Nor’Westers was a post of Hudson’s Bay men under Thomas Miller, an Orkneyman; and hosts of freemen--half-breed trappers and buffalo runners--made this their headquarters, refusing allegiance to either company and selling their hunt to the highest bidder. The highest bidder was the trader who would give away the most rum, and as traders do not give away rum for nothing, there were free fights during the drunken brawls to plunder the intoxicated hunters of furs. Henry commanded some fifty-five Nor’Westers and yearly sent out from Pembina one hundred and ten packs of furs by the famous old Red River ox carts made all of wood, hubs and wheels, that creaked and rumbled and screeched their way in long procession of single file to waiting canoes at Winnipeg. Henry had come to the wilderness with a hard, cynical sneer for the vices of the fur trader’s life. Within a few years, the fine edge of his scorn had turned on himself and on all life besides, because while he scorned savage vices he could never leave them alone. Like the snare round the feet of a man who has floundered into the quicksands, they sucked him down till his life was lost on the Columbia in a drunken spree. One can trace Henry’s degeneration in his journals from cynic to sinner and sinner to sot, till he has so completely lost the sense of shame, lost the memory that other men can have higher codes, that he unblushingly sets down in his diary how, to-day, he broke his thumb thrashing a man in a drunken bout; how, yesterday, he had to give a squaw a tremendous pommelling before she would let him steal the furs of her absent lord; how he “had a good time last night with the H. B. C. man playing the flute and the drum and drinking the ten-gallon keg clean.” Henry’s régime at Pembina became noted, not from _his_ character, but from legends of famous characters who gathered there. One night in December, 1807, Henry came home to his lodge and found a young Hudson’s Bay clerk waiting in great distress. The Nor’Wester asked the visitor what was wanted. The intruder begged that the others present should be sent from the room. Henry complied, and turned about to discover a young white woman disguised in man’s clothes, who threw herself on her knees and implored Henry to take pity on her. Her lover of the Orkney Islands had abandoned her. Dressed in man’s garb, she had joined the Hudson’s Bay service and pursued him to the wilderness. In Henry’s log cabin, her child was born. Henry sent mother and infant daughter across to Mr. Haney of the Hudson’s Bay Company, who forwarded both to the recalcitrant Orkneyman--John Scart, at Grand Forks. Before her secret was discovered, according to legend, the woman had been in Hudson’s Bay service of Red River Department for four years. Mother and child were sent back to the Orkneys, where they came to destitution.