It was the belief of the chiefs that they and their sons were personages so important that their deaths could not occur in a natural way, but were always attributable to the malevolent influence of some one, whom they selected in an unaccountable manner and unhesitatingly sacrificed. One most near and dear to the deceased was as likely to be selected as another. The former wife of McDougall, now favourite wife of Casanov, was thus selected by him, to accompany her own son, who died of consumption, to the great beyond, but she escaped and sought and was accorded protection at Fort Vancouver. Mr. Black, an officer of the Hudson's Bay Company in charge of their Fort on Thompson's River, fell a victim to the same superstitious custom--shot in the back by the nephew of an old chief with whom Black had been on the most friendly terms, at the instigation of the dead chief's widow. Regard for Mr. Black, however, impelled the young man's tribe to ignore the sanction of the custom and hunt down and put him to death. The company chartered by gay King Charles II--"the company of gentleman adventurers trading into Hudson's Bay," or "the Honourable the Hudson's Bay Company"--as it was and still is styled--was undoubtedly the dominant partner in the new coalition. Newspaper and pamphlet warfare occasionally broke out between partizans or admirers of the former rival corporations during the next half century--an occasional flow of ink of controversy instead of the flow of blood which sometimes characterized their collisions in former days--but the North West Company had ceased to exist, while the Hudson's Bay Company ruled almost half a continent.