CHAPTER V 

 JOHN COLTER — FREE TRAPPER 



Long before sunrise hunters were astir in the mountains. 



The Crows were robbers, the Blackfeet murderers ; and scouts 

 of both tribes haunted every mountain defile where a white hunter 

 might pass with provisions and peltries which these rascals could 

 plunder. 



The trappers circumvented their foes by setting the traps after 

 nightfall and lifting the game before daybreak. 



Night in the mountains was full of a mystery that the imagina- 

 tion of the Indians peopled with terrors enough to frighten them 

 away. The sudden stilling of mountain torrent and noisy leaping 

 cataract at sundown when the thaw of the upper snows ceased, the 

 smothered roar of rivers under ice, the rush of whirlpools through 

 the blackness of some far canon, the crashing of rocks thrown down 

 by unknown forces, the shivering echo that multiplied itself a 

 thousandfold and ran "rocketing" from peak to peak startling the 

 silences — these things filled the Indian with superstitious fears. 



The gnomes, called in trapper's vernacular "hoodoos" — great 

 pillars of sandstone higher than a house, left standing in valleys by 

 prehistoric floods — were to the Crows and Blackfeet petrified 

 giants that only awakened at night to hurl down rocks on intruding 

 mortals. And often the quiver of a shadow in the night wind gave 

 reality to the Indian's fears. The purr of streams over rocky 

 bed was whispering, the queer quaking echoes of falling rocks were 

 giants at war, and the mists rising from swaying waterfalls, spirit- 

 forms portending death. 



Morning came more ghostly among the peaks. 



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