246 THE FUR TRADE OF AMERICA 



sure that Scott must have died ; for they did not go 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 him. The terror that spurred the emaciated man to 

 drag himself all this weary distance can barely be conceived ; but 

 such were the fearful odds taken by every free trapper who went 

 up the Platte, across the parched plains, or to the headwaters of 

 the Missouri. 



The time for the free trappers to go out was, in Indian language, 

 "when the leaves began to fall." If a mighty hunter like Colter, 

 the trapper was to the savage "big Indian me" ; if only an ordinary 

 vagrant of woods and streams, the white man was "big knife you," 

 in distinction to the red man carrying only primitive weapons. 

 Very often the free trapper slipped away from the fur post secretly, 

 or at night ; for there were questions of licenses which he disregarded, 

 knowing well that the buyer of his furs would not inform for fear 

 of losing the pelts. Also and more important in counselling caution, 

 the powerful fur companies had spies on the watch to dog the free 

 trapper to his hunting-grounds ; and rival hunters would not hesitate 

 to bribe the natives with a keg of rum for all the peltries which 

 the free trapper had already bought 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 who went 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 meat, 

 and a few gaudy trinkets for a squaw all the pemmican white men 

 could use. 



Going by the river routes, four days out from St. Louis brought 

 the trapper into regions of danger. Indian scouts hung on the 

 watch among the sedge of the river bank. One thin line of upcurl- 



