226 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



laugh at the episode as a joke if the wounded brute had treed him. 

 "For sure, good t'ing dat was not de prairie dat tarn," he would 

 say, flinging down the pelt of his foe. The other trappers with 

 Indian blood in their veins might laugh, but they shook their heads 

 when his back was turned. 



Flanking the fire by some of the great gullies that cut the foothills 

 like trenches, the hunters began to find the signs they had been 

 seeking. For Ba'tiste, the many different signs had but one mean- 

 ing. Where some summer rain pool had dried almost to a soft 

 mud hole, the other trappers saw little cleft foot-marks that meant 

 deer, and prints like a baby's fingers that spelled out the visit of 

 some member of the weasel family, and broad clay-hoof impressions 

 that had spread under the weight as some giant moose had gone 

 shambling over the quaking mud bottom. But Ba'tiste looked 

 only at a long shuffling foot-mark the length of a man's fore-arm 

 with paddle ball-like pressures as of monster toes. The French 

 hunter would at once examine which way that great foot had 

 pointed. Were there other impressions dimmer on the dry mud ? 

 Did the crushed spear-grass tell any tales of what had passed 

 that mud hole ? If it did, Ba'tiste would be seen wandering 

 apparently aimlessly out on the prairie, carrying his uncased rifle 

 carefully that the sunlight should not glint from the barrel, zig- 

 zagging up a foothill where perhaps wild plums or shrub berries 

 hung rotting with frost ripeness. Ba'tiste did not stand full height 

 at the top of the hill. He dropped face down, took off his hat 

 or scarlet "safety" handkerchief, and peered warily over the crest 

 of the hill. If he went on over into the next valley, the other men 

 would say they "guessed he smelt bear." If he came back, they 

 knew he had been on a cold scent that had faded indistinguishably 

 as the grasses thinned. 



Southern slopes of prairie and foothill are often matted tangles 

 of a raspberry patch. Here Ba'tiste read many things — stories 

 of many bears, of families, of cubs, of old cross fellows wandering 

 alone. Great slabs of stone had been clawed up by mighty hands. 



