178 The Winning of the West 



old gun that was on the ground ; but the gun would 

 not go off, and the Indian turned and escaped. 

 Mansker broke the old gun, and returned speedily 

 to his comrades. The next day they all went to the 

 spot, where they found the dead Indian and took 

 away his tomahawk, knife, and bullet-bag; but they 

 never found his gun. The other Indian had come 

 back, had loaded his horses with furs, and was gone. 

 They followed him all that day and all night with 

 a torch of dry cane, and could never overtake him. 

 Finding that there were other bands of Indians 

 about, they then left their hunting grounds. To- 

 ward the close of his life old Mansker, like many 

 another fearless and ignorant backwoods fighter, be- 

 came so much impressed by the fiery earnestness 

 and zeal of the Methodists that he joined himself to 

 them and became a strong and helpful prop of the 

 community whose first foundations he had helped to 

 lay. 



Sometimes the hunters met Creole trappers, who 

 sent their tallow, hides, and furs in pirogues and 

 bateaux down the Mississippi to Natchez or Or- 

 leans, insted of having to transport them on pack- 

 horses through the perilous forest-tracks across the 

 mountains. They had to encounter dangers from 

 beasts as well as men. More than once we hear 

 of one who, in a cane-brake or tangled thicket, 

 was mangled to death by the horns and hoofs of a 

 wounded buffalo. 27 All of the wild beasts were then 

 comparatively unused to contact with rifle-bearing 

 27 As Haywood, 81. 



