Andrews Against McDonald’s Practical Counsel

This conflict traces Andrews’s refusal to trade his search for direct experience for McDonald’s safer commercial future, and the way their opposing hopes become harder to distinguish from self-deception.

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The Job Offer

The Job Offer McDonald’s Proposal McDonald offers Andrews clerical work in his growing hide business, presenting the job as a practical opening for a young man with money and education. He points to the village’s expansion and the expected railroad, arguing that investment and patience could make Andrews prosperous. Andrews’s Refusal Andrews rejects the offer because employment would bind him to a purpose he does not share. He has come west to encounter the country directly, though he cannot fully explain what he hopes to find. The disagreement establishes a conflict between McDonald’s faith in enterprise and Andrews’s desire to escape inherited routines.

The Hunter’s Warning

The Hunter’s Warning A Different Path After Andrews asks McDonald for someone who knows the hunting life, McDonald directs him to Miller but warns him against joining a hunt. He sees hunters as destructive, unreliable men and fears that Andrews will be drawn into their world rather than the stable business McDonald imagines for him. Advice Rejected McDonald’s caution does not settle the dispute: it sharpens Andrews’s wish to make his own choice. When Miller describes a hidden Colorado herd and Andrews considers financing an expedition, the practical alternative McDonald offered loses its force. The conflict shifts from a difference in outlook to a decision with immediate financial and physical consequences.

The Chance to Withdraw

The Chance to Withdraw McDonald’s Intervention McDonald tells Andrews that Miller has pitched the same expedition before and may be relying on an old discovery that no longer promises a substantial herd. He offers to buy back the supplies and arrange a shorter, more profitable hunt through his own crews, giving Andrews a concrete way to limit his losses. A Promise Held Andrews refuses to withdraw because he has given Miller his word. McDonald recognizes his stubbornness but cannot persuade him to exchange the uncertain expedition for a safer arrangement. Their conflict now turns on competing ideas of responsibility: McDonald emphasizes preserving capital, while Andrews treats keeping his commitment as more important than recovering money.

The Failed Return

The Failed Return The Missing Trade After the expedition returns without its wagon or hides, Miller expects McDonald to honor their agreement to buy the winter pelts. McDonald explains that the market has collapsed, his own stock has become nearly worthless, and his business can no longer meet its obligations. Miller hears betrayal where McDonald sees an economic disaster that has already overtaken them both. Blame and Recognition Miller accuses McDonald of dragging the hunters down with him; McDonald answers that the hunters helped ruin the trade by flooding it with hides. The argument exposes how neither man controls the forces that made their ventures seem promising. Andrews stays behind to speak with McDonald, signaling that the conflict has become a reckoning with the assumptions behind both men’s plans.

A World Without Buyers

A World Without Buyers Destruction as Retaliation Miller burns McDonald’s hides, abandoned wagons, and office after learning that the accumulated goods cannot be sold at the value he expected. McDonald rushes toward the fire and confronts the man destroying his property, but the gathered villagers watch rather than intervene. Miller’s action turns their economic dispute into a physical spectacle that consumes the evidence of their failed ambitions. The Final Breach McDonald insists that the hides were his even if their market value had vanished; Miller treats their destruction as an answer to a broken bargain. The two men’s confrontation ends without reconciliation: Miller rides away, McDonald leaves, and Andrews remains to face the emptiness left behind. Their conflict resolves not through victory but through the destruction of the material world both had trusted.

Andrews’s first morning in Butcher’s Crossing

The evening Andrews meets Miller at Jackson’s Saloon

Five days after Miller leaves for Ellsworth

The expedition’s return to Butcher’s Crossing in late May

That night, as Miller sets fire to McDonald’s stock