CHAPTER VII 

 KOOT AND THE BOB-CAT 



Old whaling ships, that tumble round the world and back 

 again from coast to coast over strange seas,' 1 hardly ever suffer 

 any of the terrible disasters that are always overtaking the proud 

 men-of-war and swift liners equipped with all that science can do 

 for them against misfortune. Ask an old salt why this is, and 

 he will probably tell you that he feels his way forward or else that he 

 steers by the same chart as that — jerking his thumb sideways from 

 the wheel towards some sea gull careening over the billows. A 

 something, that is akin to the instinct of wild creatures warning 

 them when to go north for the summer, when to go south for the 

 winter, when to scud for shelter from coming storm, guides the 

 old whaler across chartless seas. 



So it is with the trapper. He may be caught in one of his 

 great steel traps and perish on the prairie. He may run short of 

 water and die of thirst on the desert. He may get his pack horses 

 tangled up in a valley where there is no game and be reduced to the 

 alternative of destroying what will carry him back to safety or 

 starving with a horse still under him, before he can get over the 

 mountains into another valley — but the true trapper will literally 

 never lose himself. Lewis and Clark rightly merit the fame of 

 having first explored the Missouri-Columbia route; but years be- 

 fore the Louisiana Purchase, free trappers were already on the 

 Columbia. David Thompson of the North-west Company was the 

 first Canadian to explore the lower Columbia ; but before Thompson 

 had crossed the Rockies, French hunters were already ranging 



273 



