Part 8 (2/2)

As for the mountaineers, they fell into the meshes of their own snares; for on the way to Snake River, when parleying with friendly Blackfeet, the accidental discharge of Bridger's gun brought a volley of arrows froer's shoulder-blade, which he carried around for three years as a memento of his own trickery

Fitzpatrick fared as badly Instigated by the American Fur Co everything that he possessed

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 32: This is no exaggeration Smith's trappers, ere scattered from Fort Vancouver to Monterey, the Astorians, Major Andrew Henry's party--had all been such wide-ranging foresters]

[Footnote 33: Fitzpatrick was late in reaching the hunting-ground this year, owing to a disaster with Smith on the way back from Santa Fe]

[Footnote 34: By law the Hudson's Bay had no right in this region fro British traders in the United States

But, then, no ht to steal half a million of another's furs, which was the record of the Rocky Mountain men]

PART II

CHAPTER IX

THE TAKING OF THE BEAVER

All su-posts waiting for the signs

And now the signs had coht-frosts Crisp autumn days, spicy with the s away southward, leaving the woods silent as the snow-padded surface of a frozen pond

hoar-frost heavier every nant pools like layers of h the Northern forests moved a new presence--the trapper

Of the tawdry, flash clothing in which popular fancy is wont to dress hiame If his costume has any colour, it is a waist-belt or neck-scarf, a toque or bright handkerchief round his head to keep distant hunters fro hied as any old, weather-worn gar over a smoky fire will reduce the newness of blanket coat and buckskin jacket to the dun shades of the grizzled forest A few days in the open and the trapper has the complexion of a bronzed tree-trunk

Like other wild creatures, this foster-child of the forest gradually takes on the appearance and habits of woodland life Nature protects the errass season to spotless white for ry eneenerating into a sloth

And the forest looks after her foster-child by transfor the smartest suit that ever stepped out of the clothier's bandbox to the dull tints of winter woods

This is the seasoning of thedoes not stop here

When the birds have gone south the silence of a winter forest on a windless day beco or the breaking of a sh the brush with noiseless stealth He must learn to see better than the caribou can hear or the wolf sht outdistances the average field-glass Besides, the trapper has learned how to look, how to see, and seeing--discern; which the average lass Then ani the stock-still in closest peril, unflinching as stone; and to et the knack of instantaneously becoh he feel the clutch of bruin's five-inch claws

And these things are only the _a b c_ of the trapper's woodcraft

One of the best hunters in Aht every anih from the fellows of its kind to be a species by itself Each day was a fresh page in the book of forest-lore

It is in the eezee, the Ojibways' troutto the late October and early Noveh the illimitable stretches of the forest land and waste prairie south of Hudson Bay, between Labrador and the Upper Missouri