JOHN COLTER — FREE TRAPPER 241 



man. His life in the Indian country had taught him a few words of 

 the Blackfoot language. He heard them conferring as to how he 

 should be tortured to atone for all that the Blackfeet had suffered 

 at white men's hands. One warrior suggested that the hunter be 

 set up as a target and shot at. Would he then be so brave ? 



But the chief shook his head. That was not game enough 

 sport for Blackfeet warriors. That would be letting a man die 

 passively. And how this man could fight if he had an opportunity ! 

 How he could resist torture if he had any chance of escaping the 

 torture ! 



But Colter stood impassive and listened. Doubtless he re- 

 gretted having 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 home, the revulsion against all the trammels 

 of civilization moved him so strongly 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 time, met Lisa coming up the 

 Missouri with a brigade 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 impelled 

 by the strange impulse of adventure which was to the hunter what 

 the instinct of migration is to bird and fish and buffalo and all 

 wild things — 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 companies 

 that supply provisions, boats and horses, expecting in return the 

 major share of profits. The free trappers fitted themselves out, 



