JOHN COLTERFREE TRAPPER K&amp;gt;1 



the Crows and Blackfeet petrified giants that only 

 awakened at night to hurl down rocks on intruding 

 mortals. And often the quiver of a shadow in the night 

 wind gave reality to the Indian s fears. The purr of 

 streams over rocky bed was whispering, the queer 

 quaking echoes of falling rocks were giants at war, 

 and the mists rising from swaying waterfalls, spirit- 

 forms portending death. 



Morning came more ghostly among the peaks. 



Thick white clouds banked the mountains from peak 

 to base, blotting out every scar and tor as a sponge 

 might wash a slate. Valleys lay blanketed in smoking 

 mist. As the sun came gradually up to the horizon far 

 away east behind the mountains, scarp and pinnacle 

 butted through the fog, stood out bodily from the mist, 

 seemed to move like living giants from the cloud banks. 

 &quot; How could they do that if they were not alive ? &quot; 

 asked the Indian. Elsewhere, shadows came from sun, 

 moon, starlight, or camp-fire. But in these valleys 

 were pencilled shadows of peaks upside down, shadows 

 all the colours of the rainbow pointing to the bottom 

 of the green Alpine lakes, hours and hours before any 

 sun had risen to cause the shadows. All this meant 

 &quot; bad medicine &quot; to the Indian, or, in white man s 

 language, mystery. 



Unless they were foraging in large bands, Crows 

 and Blackfeet shunned the mountains after nightfall. 

 That gave the white man a chance to trap in safety. 



Early one morning two white men slipped out of 

 their sequestered cabin built in hiding of the hills at 

 the head waters of the Missouri. Under covert of brush 

 wood lay a long odd-shaped canoe, sharp enough at the 

 prow to cleave the narrowest waters between rocks, so 

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