THE TALL MASTER
The story has been so much tossed about in the mouths of Indians, and
half-breeds, and men of the Hudson's Bay Company, that you are pretty
sure to hear only an apocryphal version of the thing as you now travel in
the North. But Pretty Pierre was at Fort Luke when the battle occurred,
and, before and after, he sifted the business thoroughly. For he had a
philosophical turn, and this may be said of him, that he never lied
except to save another from danger. In this matter he was cool and
impartial from first to last, and evil as his reputation was in many ways
there were those who believed and trusted him. Himself, as he travelled
here and there through the North, had heard of the Tall Master. Yet he
had never met anyone who had seen him; for the Master had dwelt, it was
said, chiefly among the strange tribes of the Far-Off Metal River whose
faces were almost white, and who held themselves aloof from the southern
races. The tales lost nothing by being retold, even when the historians
were the men of the H. B. C.;---Pierre knew what accomplished liars may
be found among that Company of Adventurers trading in Hudson's Bay, and
how their art had been none too delicately engrafted by his own people.
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