But one quarterly paysheet, returned to Winnipeg from Fort
Churchill, showed that Running Rabbit in addition to her food allowance
had been handed out forty cents' worth of cotton. Stern enquiry, backed
by red-tape and The Company's seal as big as a saucer, was sent up to
the Churchill Factor. Why had the allowance of Mrs. Blueskin (nee
Running Rabbit) been exceeded? By "return mail" nine months later the
Factor reported,
"The widow's gone,
Her tent's forsaken,
No more she comes
For flour and bacon.
N.B. The cotton was used for her shroud."
The Ancient Company was penny-wise, but in spite of the copybook line,
not pound-foolish, as its dividend paysheets conclusively prove.
There is no desire to show forth these silent ones of the North as
infallible men and immaculate. They make many mistakes; they were and
are delightfully human, and we couldn't picture one of them with a
saintly aureole. But in the past, as in the present, they were large
men; they honoured their word, and you couldn't buy them. Men of action,
whether inside fort walls, bartering in the tepee of the Indian, or off
on silent trails alone,--it has been given to each of them to live life
at firsthand.
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