Rallying his men round him and taking
no one into his confidence, the doughty little Russian sent a formal
messenger to Konovalof, the bandit, at his redoubt on Cook's Inlet,
pompously summoning him in the name of the governor of Siberia to
appear and answer for his misdeeds. To the brigand, the summons was a
bolt out of the blue. How was he to know not a word had come from the
governor of Siberia, and the summons {328} was sheer bluff? He was so
terrorized at the long hand of power reaching across the Pacific to
clutch him back to perhaps branding or penal service in Siberia, that
he did not even ask to see Baranof's documents. Coming post-haste, he
offered explanations, excuses, frightened pleadings. Baranof would
have none of him. He clapped the culprit and associates in irons, put
them on Ismyloff's vessel, and despatched them for trial to Siberia.
That he also seized the furs of his rivals for safe keeping, was a mere
detail. The prisoners were, of course, discharged; for Baranof's
conduct could no more bear scrutiny than their own; but it was one way
to get rid of rivals; and the fur companies at war in the Canadian
northwest practised the same method twenty years later.
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