JOHN COLTER-FREE TRAPPER 177 



Simon Frasers hunters crawled down the river-course 

 named after him. &quot; Our shoes/ said one trapper, &quot; did 

 not last a single day/ 



&quot; We had to plunge our daggers into the ground, . . . other 

 wise we would slide into the river,&quot; wrote Fraser. &quot;We cut 

 steps into the declivity, fastened a line to the front of the canoe, 

 with which some of the men ascended in order to haul it up. 

 . . . Our lives hung, as it were, upon a thread, as the failure 

 of the line or the false step of the man might have hurled us into 

 eternity. . . . We had to pass where no human being should 

 venture. . . . Steps were formed like a ladder on the shrouds of 

 a ship, by poles hanging to one another and crossed at certain 

 distances with twigs, the whole suspended from the top to the 

 foot of immense precipices, and fastened at both extremities to 

 stones and trees.&quot; 



He speaks of the worst places being where these 

 frail swaying ladders led up to the overhanging ledge 

 of a shelving precipice. 



Such were the very real adventures of the trapper s 

 life, a life whose fascinations lured John Colter from 

 civilization to the wilds again and again till he came 

 back once too often and found himself stripped, help 

 less, captive, in the hands of the Blackfeet. 



It would be poor sport torturing a prisoner who 

 showed no more fear than this impassive white man 

 coolly listening and waiting for them to compass his 

 death. So the chief dismissed the suggestion to shoot 

 at their captive as a target. Suddenly the Blackfoot 

 leader turned to Colter. &quot; Could the white man run 

 fast ? &quot; he asked. In a flash Colter guessed what was 

 to be his fate. He, the hunter, was to be hunted. No, 

 he cunningly signalled, he was only a poor runner. 



Bidding his warriors stand still, the chief roughly 



