“As it happens I can compare pedigrees with the best of them—Good Lord!” he broke off and laughed ironically. “That’s sickening; but I’m trying to make the thing clear. Naive recital this, I must say. Well, anyway, I measured up to the standard of breeding, but fell wofully short on the financial requirements. And, somehow, foxy Simon grew afraid that I was in a fair way to upset his cherished plans for Jess. This was after we’d gone in together on this fur business. He had always acted rather guardedly about Jessie and myself, but I had him there; so long as she went out, I could meet her socially, and he could not prevent. Then a year ago last summer the Hudson’s Bay undertook to run me out of this country. That bred the trouble on High River, and after that I was really outlawed. I expect he began at once to figure how he could turn that to his advantage—regarding me as a dishtowel that he could wring dry and throw aside. He has nursed a direct, personal grudge since the first season. Naturally, he wanted to dominate everything, and I wouldn’t let him. He thought himself the biggest toad in the puddle, and it angered him when he found himself outsplashed. He made mistakes. I corrected them, and held him down at every turn; I had to. It was a ticklish job, and I made him move according to my judgment. Which was a very bitter sort of medicine for a man of Montell’s domineering stamp. So he was not long in developing a rancorous dislike of me, which seems to have thrived on concealment. “Where I made the grand mistake was in letting him keep her from knowing that we were partners in this business. Without giving the matter a second thought I had kept our business strictly to myself. He hinted that others might follow our lead, and at first we had visions of making terms with the Hudson’s Bay and building up a permanent trade here. After two or three years of this I didn’t think it well to plunge into explanations last spring. I made a mistake there, however; the mistake, I should say. Jessie had gone out a good deal the last two winters, both in St. Louis and New Orleans, and she was becoming quite a belle. For all that, I think—oh, well, it doesn’t matter what I think. To make a long story short, a day or two before the _Moon_ went upstream she told me that she was going as far as Benton with her father. I, of course had to rise to the occasion, be very properly surprised and inform her that I, too, contemplated a trip on that same steamer. And I straightway hunted Montell up and tried to have him dissuade her from the journey. “I didn’t fathom the purport of it, even then—although I knew that he would welcome any chance to put me wrong in her eyes. It was too late, I felt, to volunteer any details concerning my part in her father’s business up North. So I contented myself with his assurance and her statement, that she would see him as far as Benton and then return on the _Moon_.