94 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



his stamping-ground,, might smile at the newcomers; 

 but they took good care to give their rivals the slip 

 when hunters left the rendezvous for the hills. 



When the mountaineers scattered, Fitzpatrick led 

 his brigade to the region between the Black Hills on 

 the east and the Bighorn Mountains on the west. The 

 first snowfall was powdering the hills. Beaver were 

 beginning to house up for the winter. Big game was 

 moving down to the valley. The hunters had pitched a 

 central camp on the banks of Powder River, gathered 

 in the supply of winter meat, and dispersed in pairs 

 to ,trap all through the valley. 



But forest rangers like Vanderburgh and Drips 

 were not to be so easily foiled. Every axe-mark on 

 windfall, every camp-fire,, every footprint in the spongy 

 mould, told which way the mountaineers had gone. 

 Fitzpatrick s hunters wakened one morning to find 

 traps marked A. F. C. beside their own in the valley. 

 The trick was too plain to be misunderstood. The 

 American Fur Company might not know the hunting- 

 grounds of the Eockies, but they were deliberately dog 

 ging the mountaineers to their secret retreats. 



Armed conflict would only bring ruin in lawsuits. 



Gathering his hunters together under cover of 

 snowfall or night, Fitzpatrick broke camp, slipped 

 stealthily out of the valley, over the Bighorn range, 

 across the Bighorn River, now almost impassable in 

 winter, into the pathless foldings of the Wind Eiver 

 Mountains, with their rampart walls and endless snow- 

 fields, westward to Snake River Valley, three hundred 

 miles away from the spies. Instead of trapping from 

 east to west, as he had intended to do so that the re 

 turn to the rendezvous would lead past the caches, 



