2 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



der, and,, without any fanfare of trumpets, stepped 

 into the pathless shade of the great forests. Or else, 

 like Williams of the Arkansas, the trapper left the 

 moorings of civilization in a canoe, hunted at night, 

 hid himself by day, evaded hostile Indians by sliding 

 down-stream with muffled paddles, slept in mid-cur 

 rent screened by the branches of driftwood, and if a 

 sudden halloo of marauders came from the distance, 

 cut the strap that held his craft to the shore and got 

 away under cover of the floating tree. Hunters cross 

 ing the Cimarron desert set out with pack-horses, and, 

 like Captain Becknell s party, were often compelled 

 to kill horses and dogs to keep from dying of thirst. 

 Frequently their fate was that of Rocky Mountain 

 Smith, killed by the Indians as he stooped to scoop out 

 a drinking-hole in the sand. Men who brought down 

 their pelts to the mountain rendezvous of Pierre s 

 Hole, or went over the divide like Fraser and Thomp 

 son of the North- West Fur Company, had to abandon 

 both horses and canoes, scaling canon walls where the 

 current was too turbulent for a canoe and the precipice 

 too sheer for a horse, with the aid of their hunting- 

 knives stuck in to the haft.* Where the difficulties 

 were too great for a few men, the fur traders clubbed 



* While Lewis and Clark were on the Upper Missouri, the 

 former had reached a safe footing along a narrow pass, when he 

 heard a voice shout, &quot;Good God, captain, what shall I do?&quot; 

 Turning, Lewis saw Windsor had slipped to the verge of a preci 

 pice, where he lay with right arm and leg over it, the other arm 

 clinging for dear life to the bluff. With his hunting-knife he 

 cut a hole for his right foot, ripped off his moccasins so that his 

 toes could have the prehensile freedom of a monkey s tail, and 

 thus crawled to safety like a fly on a wall.^ 



