98 THE STORY OF THE TRAPPER 



Westers and Hudson s Bay in Canada only fifteen years 

 before. 



But the mountaineers knew that the Blackfeet 

 hated Henry Vanderburgh ! 



Corduroyed muskeg where the mountaineers long 

 file of pack-horses had passed, fresh-chopped logs to 

 make a way through blockades of fallen pine, the green 

 moss that hangs festooned among the spruce at cloud- 

 line broken and swinging free as if a rider had passed 

 that way, grazed bark where the pack-saddle had 

 brushed a tree-trunk, muddy hoof-marks where the 

 young packers had balked at fording an icy stream, 

 scratchings on rotten logs where a mountaineer s pegged 

 boot had stepped all these told which way Fitzpatrick 

 and Bridger had led their brigade. 



Oh, it was an easy matter to scent so hot a trail ! 

 Here the ashes of a camp-fire ! There a pile of rock 

 placed a deal too carefully for nature s work the 

 cached furs of the fleeing rivals ! Besides, what with 

 canon and whirlpool, there are so very few ways by 

 which a cavalcade can pass through mountains that the 

 simplest novice could have trailed Fitzpatrick and 

 Bridger. 



Doubtless between the middle of August when Van 

 derburgh and Drips set out on the chase and the middle 

 of September when they ran down the fugitives the 

 American Fur Company leaders had many a laugh at 

 their own cleverness. 



They succeeded in overtaking the mountaineers in 

 the valley of the Jefferson, splendid hunting-grounds 

 with game enough for two lines of traps, which Van 

 derburgh and Drips at once set out. No swift flight 

 by forced marches this time ! The mountaineers sat 



