Hatchett was his name.

He looked it; tall, thin, sinewy, with bird-like eyes that were shifting this way and that at all times, as though he were constantly on the alert for an ambush, or feared thieves.

He was suspicious of David, coming in alone in this No Man's Land with a pack on his back; a white man, too, which made him all the more suspicious.

Perhaps a possible free trader looking for a location.

Or, worse still, a spy of the Company's hated competitors, the Revilon Brothers.