Now, things began to hum at Fort Hearne. Never had such a factor been seen as MacDonald. He spoke Dogrib and Chipewyan and Cree and French as well as his father’s Orkney Island brogue: there was no hunter for hundreds of miles with whom he could not converse in his own tongue. He was on his feet from morning until night and kept every one else on the go. As a freetrader he had beaten the Company at its own game. With the Company’s prestige behind him he allowed no freetrader to raise his head. By fair means none could compete, and who dared try force or trickery against MacDonald? In the long winter evenings, when boresome hours of sloth were whiled away with story telling, strange tales began to circulate about the big factor. Since little or nothing was known of his early life, imagination ran riot. Angus knew that the factor could transform himself into a wolf, and hunt deer thus disguised. Casimir pictured him in his youth, pulling cargo-laden scows, single-handed, that were wont to be towed by a half-dozen strapping Indians. Jean had it from an aunt that MacDonald had once swum a river in pursuit of a bear, had stabbed it with a knife and carried the carcass twenty miles to camp. Some said he was bulletproof, and others with a tincture of Christian lore spoke of his pact with the devil. He grew into the central figure of a new mythology.