224 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



anatomy which the Indian considers to be the most choice bit of a 

 moose. 1 And the Kootenay hunter who was sent through the 

 forests of Idaho to follow up the track of a lost brave brought 

 back proof of an actual bear ; for he found a dead man lying across 

 a pile of logs with his skull crushed in like an egg-shell by some- 

 thing that had risen swift and silent from a lair on the other side 

 of the logs and dealt the climbing brave one quick terrible blow. 

 And little blind Ba'tiste, wizened and old, who spent the last twenty 

 years of his life weaving grass mats and carving curious little wooden 

 animals for the children of the chief factor, could convince you that 

 the bears he slew in his young days were very real bears, altogether 

 different from the clumsy bruins that gambol with boys and girls 

 through fairy books. 



That is, he could convince you if he would ; for he usually sat 

 weaving and weaving at the grasses — weaving bitter thoughts 

 into the woof of his mat — without a word. Round his white 

 helmet, such as British soldiers wear in hot lands, he always hung a 

 heavy thick linen thing like the frill of a sunbonnet, coming over 

 the face as well as the neck — "to keep desun off," he would mumble 

 out if you asked him why. More than that of the mysterious frill 

 worn on dark days as well as sunny, he would never vouch unless 

 some town-bred man patronizingly pooh-poohed the dangers of 

 bear-hunting. Then the grass strands would tremble with excite- 

 ment and the little French hunter's body would quiver and he would 

 begin pouring forth a jumble, half habitant, half Indian, with a 

 mixture of all the oaths from both languages, pointing and pointing 

 at his hidden face and bidding you look what the bear had done 

 to him, but never lifting the thick frill. 



It was somewhere between the tributary waters that flow 

 north to the Saskatchewan and the rivers that start near the Sas- 



1 In further confirmation of Montagnais's bear, the chief factor's daughter, who told 

 me the story, was standing in the fort gate when the Indian came running back with a grizzly 

 pelt over his shoulder. When he saw her his hands went up to conceal the price he had paid 

 for the pelt. 



