THE MOUNTAINEERS 93 



American Fur Company held confabs over crumpled 

 maps, planning the next season s hunt, drawing in 

 roughly the fresh information brought down each year 

 of new regions, and plotting out all sections of the 

 mountains for the different brigades. 



This year a new set of faces appeared at the ren 

 dezvous, from thirty to fifty men with full quota of 

 saddle-horses, pack-mules, and traps. On the traps 

 were letters that afterward became magical in all the 

 Up-Country A. F. C. American Fur Company. 

 Leading these men were Vanderburgh, who had already 

 become a successful trader among the Aricaras and 

 had to his credit one victory over the Blackfeet; and 

 Drips, who had been a member of the old Missouri Fur 

 Company and knew the Upper Platte well. But the 

 Eocky Mountain men, who knew the cost of life and 

 time and money it had taken to learn the hunting- 

 grounds of the Rockies, doubtless smiled at these ten- 

 derfeet who thought to trap as successfully in the hills 

 as they had on the plains. 



Two things counselled caution. Vanderburgh 

 would stop at nothing. Drips had married a native 

 woman of the Platte, whose tribe might know the 

 hunting-grounds as well as the mountaineers. Hunters 

 fraternize in friendship at holidaying ; but they no more 

 tell each other secrets than rival editors at a banquet. 

 Mountaineers knowing the field like Bridger who had 

 been to the Columbia with Henry as early as 1822 and 

 had swept over the ranges as far south as the Platte, 

 or Fitzpatrick * who had made the Salt Lake region 



* Fitzpatrick was late in reaching the hunting-ground this 

 year, owing to a disaster with Smith on the way back from 

 Santa Fe. 



