Haldane met the complaint with a loud guffaw. “I have come to this country for furs,” he explained, “and I have found them, and I intend to keep them.” Red Lake in Minnesota belonged to the same Albany department. Before Corrigal could dispatch the furs to the bay, Haldane’s bullies swooped down and pillaged the cabins there, this time not only of furs, but provisions. Up at Big Falls near Lake Winnipeg, John Crear and five men had built a fort for the English. One night toward fall a party of Northwest voyageurs, led by Alexander MacDonell, landed and camped. Next morning when all of Crear’s men had gone fishing but two, MacDonell marched to the Hudson’s Bay house, accused Crear of taking furs owed in debt to the Nor’Westers, and on that excuse broke open the warehouse. Plowman, a Hudson’s Bay hunter, sprang to prevent. Quick as flash, MacDonell’s dagger was out. Plowman fell stabbed and the voyageurs had clubbed Crear to earth with the butt ends of their rifles. Furs and provisions were carried off. As if this were not enough and ample proof that the accusation had simply been an excuse to drive the Hudson’s Bay men off the field, MacDonell came back in February of 1807, surrounded Crear’s house with bullies, robbed it of everything and had Crear beaten till he signed a paper declaring he had sold the furs and that he would never again come to the country. This was no fur trading. It was raiding--such raiding as the Highlanders carried into the Lowlands of Scotland. It was a banditti warfare that was bound to bring its own punishment. Besides Albany River, the two great river trails inland to the plains from Hudson’s Bay were by Churchill River to Athabasca and by Hayes River to Cumberland House on the Saskatchewan. From 1805 J. D. Campbell was the Northwest partner appointed to block the advance inland to this region. John Spencer was at Reindeer Lake for the Hudson’s Bay in 1808. Knowing when the Indians from the Athabasca were due, he had sent William Linklater out to meet them, and Linklater was snowshoeing leisurely homeward drawing the furs on a toboggan, when toward nightfall he suddenly met the Northwest partner and his bullies on the trail. There was the usual pretence that the furs were a debt owed to the Nor’Westers, and the hollowness of that pretence was shown by the fact that before Linklater could answer, a Northwest bully had seized his snowshoes and sent him sprawling. Campbell and the bullies then marched off with the furs. This happened twice at Caribou Lake.