BATISTE, THE BEAR HUNTER 145 



Old hunters may be great spinners of yarns 

 &quot; liars &quot; the city man calls them but Montagnais, who 

 squats on his heels round the fur company forts on 

 Peace River, carries ocular evidence in the artificial 

 ridge of a deformed nose that the bear which he slew 

 was a real one with an epicurean relish for that part 

 of Indian anatomy which the Indian considers to be 

 the most choice bit of a moose.* And the Kootenay 

 hunter who was sent through the forests of Idaho to 

 follow up the track of a lost brave brought back proof 

 of an actual bear; for he found a dead man lying across 

 a pile of logs with his skull crushed in like an egg 

 shell by something that had risen swift and silent from 

 a lair on the other side of the logs and dealt the climb 

 ing brave one quick terrible blow. And little blind 

 Ba tiste, wizened and old, who spent the last twenty 

 years of his life weaving grass mats and carving curi 

 ous little wooden animals for &quot;the children of the chief 

 factor, could convince you that the bears he slew in his 

 young days were very real bears, altogether different 

 from the clumsy bruins that gambol with boys and 

 girls through fairy books. 



That is, he could convince you if he would; for 

 he usually sat weaving and weaving at the grasses 

 weaving bitter thoughts into the woof of his mat- 

 without a word. Round his white helmet, such as 

 British soldiers wear in hot lands, he always hung a 

 heavy thick linen thing like the frill of a sun-bonnet, 



* In further confirmation of Montagnais s bear, the chief fac 

 tor s daughter, who told me the story, was standing in the fort 

 gate when the Indian came running back with a grisly pelt over 

 his shoulder. When he saw her his hands went up to conceal 

 the price he had paid for the pelt. 



