JOHN COLTER — FREE TRAPPER 247 



ing smoke, or a piece of string — babiche (leather cord, called by 

 the Indians assapapish) — fluttering from a shrub, or little sticks 

 casually dropped on the river bank pointing one way, all were 

 signs that told of marauding bands. Some birch tree was notched 

 with an Indian cipher — a hunter had passed that way and claimed 

 the bark for his next year's canoe. Or the mark might be on a 

 cottonwood — some man wanted this tree for a dugout. Perhaps 

 a stake stood with a mark at the entrance to a beaver-marsh — 

 some hunter had found this ground first and warned all other 

 trappers off by the code of wilderness honor. Notched tree- 

 trunks told of some runner gone across country, blazing a trail 

 by which he could return. Had a piece of fungus been torn from 

 a hemlock log ? There were Indians near, and the squaw had 

 taken the thing to whiten leather. If a sudden puff of black smoke 

 spread out in a cone above some distant tree, it was an ominous 

 sign to the trapper. The Indians had set fire to the inside of a 

 punky trunk and the shooting flames were a rallying call. 



In the most perilous regions the trapper travelled only after 

 nightfall with muffled paddles — that is, muffled where the handle 

 might strike the gunwale. Camp fires warned him which side of 

 the river to avoid ; and often a trapper slipping past under the 

 shadow of one bank saw hobgoblin figures dancing round the flames 

 of the other bank — Indians celebrating their scalp dance. In 

 these places the white hunter ate cold meals to avoid lighting a 

 fire ; or if he lighted a fire, after cooking his meal he withdrew at 

 once and slept at a distance from the light that might betray him. 



The greatest risk of travelling after dark during the spring 

 floods arose from what the voyageurs called embarras — trees torn 

 from the banks sticking in the soft bottom like derelicts with 

 branches to entangle the trapper's craft ; but the embarras often 

 befriended the solitary white man. Usually he slept on shore 

 rolled in a buffalo-robe ; but if Indian signs were fresh, he moored 

 his canoe in mid-current and slept under hiding of the driftwood. 

 Friendly Indians did not conceal themselves, but came to the river 



