SPEARING SALMON 215 



Kibbee considered himself very fortunate in securing 

 the services of a squaw, who was a good cook and a 

 clean housekeeper, who could trap and shoot almost 

 as well as he could, who climbed the highest moun- 

 tains with him after mountain goats or bears, and who 

 conducted herself with such decorum as to be received 

 courteously by the families in Barkerville with whom 

 Kibbee was acquainted. 



She was with him for a period of six years, and then 

 a yearning for a more nomadic life took possession of 

 her and she drifted away. Then he took in an old 

 man of seventy, more out of charity than anything 

 else, and he stayed with him for over four years, 

 Kibbee clothing him and keeping him in comfort. 

 Then the old fellow left. 



Now he has another old man of seventy, who cooks 

 and looks after his various interests with rare fidelity. 



In the winter time this man, Kibbee, with blanket, 

 bait, bacon, axe, skinning knife, matches, and a few 

 pounds of flour on a hand sled, trudges forward through 

 the wilderness. The northern lights glow in the dis- 

 tance and it is bitterly cold, but cold makes finer fur. 

 Down far trails in gloomy forests, across the breasts 

 of silvered streams, he labors from trap to trap. 

 Should he find fifty dollars' worth of fur along the 

 whole line of the traps he is content. 



Meat is what the trapper mostly lives upon meat 

 of different kinds and of different degrees of tough- 



