Yellow Hair had no thoughts to spare for McGlincy.
He hated the river because the current was striving relentlessly to carry him back to York Factory.
Already the English would have made oars and manned their barges. With the glee and questionable mercy of foxhunters, the English had been quick to take up the chase and their long sweeps were driving their boats upriver at a speed which curled white froth on the cannon-mounted bows.
At York Factory the governor had been worked up into puffing rage and sweating activity and the word was gone on the roar of the snow-laden wind that Hudson’s Bay Company would pay, in cash or trade goods, the sum of fifty pounds—a half year’s wages—for the presentation of Yellow Hair’s scalp at the factory.
As a sort of apology for this barbaric cry, the go
