147 AT THE PAINTED WOODS 
seem to'touch a hair. Nordid I slay any more deer 
during the balance of the hunting season, however the 
advantage “gained or accurate the aim. This rifle here 
used was afterward stolen and never recovered. — 
While not superstitious enough to attribute the inci- 
dent other than a ‘‘striking allusion,’’ yet a change of 
inclinations or new ideas replaced the set ones of the 
past two decades, or more. The hunter’s life once the 
passion of my existence became irksome and distasteful. 
To protectand save the few hunted deer left along ~ 
the Upper Missouri bottom lands and stay their exter- 
mination came with the birth of new ideas—and with 
this also came a feeling of glad relief that my deer hunt- 
ing days had ended. 
There was a trite old saying often repeated among 
fur hunters of a quarter of a century ago, that a per- 
son who enters into a professional trapper’s life, 
‘formed a partnership with Old Nick.’’ The records 
‘of the pioneer trappers of the Northwest as told by 
Washington Irving and other early day writers would 
seem to confirm it, even though contrary to another time 
honored maxim ‘‘that the devil takes care of his own.’’ 
Without making notation other than regarding the Up- 
per Missouri country, the record there for the past forty 
years is that there are two other avocations beside the 
professional trapper and hide hunter, that can show a ser 
ies of disasters in its performance,—viz: the woodyard 
man and saw mill proprietor. The record of disaster 
and misfortune that have befallen these sturdy sons of 
toil and timber distruction on the Upper Missouri,could 
ardly be believed did not the plain facts show the folly 
