Part 14 (1/2)

But the chief shook his head That was not ga a ht if he had an opportunity! How he could resist torture if he had any chance of escaping the torture!

But Colter stood i left the well-defended brigades of the fur companies to hunt alone in the wilderness But the fascination of the wild life is as a gambler's vice--the more a man has, the more he wants Had not Colter crossed the Rockies with Lewis and Clark and spent two years in the mountain fastnesses? Yet when he reached the Mandans on the way hoainst all the traly that he asked permission to return to the wilderness, where he spent two more years Had he not set out for St Louis a second tiade of hunters, and for the third time turned his face to the wilderness? Had he not wandered with the Crows, fought the Blackfeet, gone down to St Louis, and been ie impulse of adventure which was to the hunter what the instinct of s--to go yet again to the wilderness? Such was the passion for the wilds that ruled the life of all free trappers

The free trappers formed a class by themselves

Other trappers either hunted on a salary of 200, 300, 400 a year, or on shares, like fishermen of the Grand Banks outfitted by ”planters,” or like western prospectors outfitted by co in return the major share of profits The free trappers fitted theiance to no man, hunted where and how they chose, and refused to carry their furs to any fort but the one that paid the highest prices For the _eurs de lard_, as they called the fur company raftsmen, they had a supre rivals to sleep with laudanues up to warfare, the free trappers had a rough and e natives can never be laid to the free trapper

He carried neither poison, nor orse than poison to the Indian--whisky--aood terms with the Indian, because his safety depended on the Indian

Renegades like Bird, the deserter from the Hudson's Bay Company, or Rose, who abandoned the Astorians, or Beckwourth of apocryphal faht cast off civilization and becouilty of half so hideous crireat fur companies of boasted respectability Wyeth of Boston, and Captain Bonneville of the ar the Root Diggers, were not free trappers in the true sense of the terht the fever of the wilds; and Captain Bonneville, a gay adventurer, whose men shot down more Indians in one trip than all the free trappers of America shot in a century As for the desperado Harvey, whos, his crimes were committed under the walls of the American Fur Company's fort MacLellan and Crooks and John Day--before they joined the Astorians--and Boone and Carson and Colter, are names that stand for the true type of free trapper

The free trapper went aood behaviour and the keenness of his wit Whatever criuilty of towards white uilty of feards the Indians Consequently, free trappers were all through Minnesota and the region ard of the Mississippi forty years before the fur co the Sioux Fisher and Fraser and Woods knew the Upper Missouri before 1806; and Brugiere had been on the Columbia many years before the Astorians caed with--a reckless waste of precious furs The great coame than they needed for the season's support And no Indian hunter, uncorrupted by whiteFaht the But the free trappers were here to-day and away to-ardless of results; and the results were the rapid extinction of fur-bearing game

Always there were more free trappers in the United States than in Canada Before the union of Hudson's Bay and Nor' Wester in Canada, all classes of trappers were absorbed by one of the two great companies

After the union, when the monopoly enjoyed by the Hudson's Bay did not permit it literally to drive a free trapper out, it could always ”freeze” hireat white northern wildernesses, or by refusing to give him transport When the monopoly passed away in 1871, free trappers pressed north froame, and carried on the same ruthless warfare on the Saskatchewan North of the Saskatchehere very reers out, the Hudson's Bay Coovernor of the coo, ”the fur trade is quite as large as ever it was”

Aure--John Johnston of the Soo, who settled at La Pointe on Lake Superior in 1792, forish, ”the White Fisher,” and became the most famous trader of the Lakes His life, too, was almost as eventful as Colter's

A member of the Irish nobility, some secret which he never chose to reveal drove hihter who refused the wooings of all her tribe's warriors In vain Johnston sued for her hand Old Wabogish bade the whiteas vast estates in America Johnston took the old chief at his word, and hty princess of the Lake When the War of 1812 set all the tribes by the ears, Johnston and his wife had as thrilling adventures as ever Colter knew a the Blackfeet

Many a free trapper, and partner of the fur cohter of a chief, as Johnston had

These were not the lightly-corant adventurer If the husband had not cast off civilization like a garararment either, when one considers that the convents of the quiet nuns dotted the wilderness like oases in a desert almost contemporaneous with the fur trade If the trapper had not sunk to the level of the savages, the little daughter of the chief was educated by the nuns for her new position I recall several cases where the child was sent across the Atlantic to an English governess so that the equality would be literal and not a sentimental fiction And yet, on no subject has the western fur trader received more persistent and unjust condemnation The heroisinian won applause, and almost similar circuhters of Indian chiefs; but because the fur trader has not posed as a sentiet for the index finger of the Pharisee[38]

North of the boundary the free trapper had s as the slow-going Mackinaw Company, itself chiefly recruited from free trappers, ruled at the junction of the Lakes, the free trappers held the hunting-grounds of the Mississippi; but after the Mackinaas absorbed by the aggressive American Fur Company, the free hunters were pushed ard On the Lower Missouri coed from 1810, so that circumstances drove the free trapper ard to thein the twentieth century as his prototype hunted two hundred years ago

In Canada--of course after 1870--he entered the mountains chiefly by three passes: (1) Yellow Head Pass southward of the Athabasca; (2) the narrow gap where the Bow ees to the plains--that is, the river where the Indians found the best wood for the h that narrow defile overtowered by the lonely flat-crowned peak called Crows Nest Mountain--that is, where the fugitive Crows took refuge fro Blackfeet

In the United States, the free hunters also approached the mountains by three main routes: (1) Up the Platte; (2) ard from the Missouri across the plains; (3) by the Three Forks of the Missouri For instance, it was co down the Platte that poor Scott's canoe was overturned, his powder lost, and his rifles rendered useless Ga's advance Berries were not ripe by the ti with their winter's hunt Scott and his fa men could not find edible roots Each day Scott weakened

There was no food Finally, Scott had strength to go no farther Hisparty far to the fore They thought that, in any case, he could not live What ought they to do?

Hang back and starve with hith, to the party whose track they had espied? On pretence of seeking roots, they deserted the helpless man Perhaps they did not come up with the advance party till they were sure that Scott o back to his aid The next spring when these same hunters went up the Platte, they found the skeleton of poor Scott sixty miles from the place where they had left hi himself all this weary distance can barely be conceived; but such were the fearful odds taken by every free trapper ent up the Platte, across the parched plains, or to the head waters of the Missouri

The tie, ”when the leaves began to fall” If aIndian rant of woods and strea knife you,” in distinction to the redonly primitive weapons Very often the free trapper slipped away froht; for there were questions of licenses which he disregarded, knoell that the buyer of his furs would not infor the pelts Also andcaution, the powerful fur co the free trapper to his hunting-grounds; and rival hunters would not hesitate to bribe the natives with a keg of ruht by advancing provisions to Indian hunters Indeed, rival hunters have not hesitated to bribe the savages to pillage and murder the free trapper; for there was no law in the fur trading country, and no one to ask what became of the free hunter ent alone into the wilderness and never returned

Going out alone, or with only one partner, the free hunter encumbered himself with few provisions Two dollars worth of tobacco would buy a thousand pounds of ”jerked” buffalo audy trinkets for a squaw all the pe by the river routes, four days out froer Indian scouts hung on the watch a s--_babi+che_ (leather cord, called by the Indians _assapapish_)--fluttering from a shrub, or little sticks casually dropped on the river bank pointing one way, all were signs that told ofbands Some birch tree was notched with an Indian cipher--a hunter had passed that way and claiht be on a cottonwood--soout Perhaps a stake stood with a mark at the entrance to a beaver-round first and warned all other trappers off by the code of wilderness honour Notched tree-trunks told of so a trail by which he could return Had a piece of fungus been torn fro? There were Indians near, and the squaw had taken the thing to whiten leather

If a sudden puff of black smoke spread out in a cone above son to the trapper The Indians had set fire to the inside of a punky trunk and the shooting flaions the trapper travelled only after nightfall with ht strike the gunwale Camp-fires warned him which side of the river to avoid; and often a trapper slipping past under the shadow of one bank saw hobgoblin figures dancing round the fla their scalp dance In these places the white hunter ate cold hted a fire, after cooking his ht thatafter dark during the spring floods arose froeurs_ called _e in the soft bottole the trapper's craft; but the _embarras_ often befriended the solitary white man Usually he slept on shore rolled in a buffalo-robe; but if Indian signs were fresh, heof the driftwood Friendly Indians did not conceal the a buffalo-robe and spreading it out to signal a welcoo ashore, whiff pipes with the chiefs and perhaps spend the night listening to the tales of exploits which each notch on the calu to other h hostile lands Always the spring floods drifted down numbers of dead buffalo; and the carrion birds sat on the trees of the shore with their wings spread out to dry in the sun The sudden flacker of a rising flock betrayed so in aing branches into the water

Different sorts of dangers beset the free trapper crossing the plains to the ades always had escort of aruard and provision packers The free trappers went alone or in pairs, picketing horses to the saddle overlaid with a buffalo-robe for a pillow, cookingood bark for ive the alarht dusk approached too near On the high rolling plains, hostiles could be descried at a distance, co over the horizon head and top first like the peak of a sail, or ehs--like wolves froh; but where could the trapper hide on bare prairie? He didn't attee on the lee side That device failing, he was at his eneer was froht knohere to find good ca streams The next year when he ca the buffalo meadows a dreadful scarcity of water ensued,” wrote Charles MacKenzie, of the fa north from the Missouri ”We had to alter our course and steer to a distant lake When we got there we found the lake dry However, we dug a pit which produced a kind of stinking liquid which we all drank It was salt and bitter, caused an inflahness of the throat, and seereat uneasiness Next day we continued our journey, but not a drop of water was to be found,and our distress became insupportable All at once our horses becae them We observed that they showed an inclination towards a hill which was close by It struck ht have scented water I ascended to the top, where, to ed in before I could prevent him,and all the horses drank to excess”