ROCKIES IN SEPTEMBER 137 



twenty dollars — ten for the bounty and ten for the 

 pelt." 



So he went on, tellin_s4 me of the ways of wild animals 

 and his experiences with them, and the whole with such 

 a relish of his life that, had I been twenty years younger, 

 I would gladly have thrown up even one winter's fox-hunt- 

 ing for a winter's trapping. I know well that a Western 

 winter is a cold experience ; but an English winter, as we 

 have seen of late, and as has been proved annually for the 

 last three years, is often anything but unbroken bliss. 

 The life of a trapper is all interest. He learns to delight 

 in it for its own sake. It has none of the attractiveness 

 that belongs to the national pursuit of the almighty dollar. 

 Indeed the trapper and the cowboy provide possibly the 

 only exceptions, the country through, to the universal 

 devotion accorded to the silver image — the type of liberty 

 and fraternity, but of equality only so far as one man has 

 as much moneyed righteousness as another. So the world 

 over. But the trapper and the cowboy, like Gallio, care 

 for none of these things. 



" You must have had queer times among the Indians ? " 

 1 suggested. "Yes, Cap'n, I've seen them pretty nasty at 

 times. And I've seen a heap of 'em wiped out — time I 

 was packing with General Miles' army after the Custer 

 masacree. I mind we surprised two hundred in their tepes 

 one morning ; but the order was to fire into the tents, and 

 most of 'em cut their way out at the back of the tents and 

 got clean off. And next night but one they shot two 

 horse-keepers and got away with all their ponies we had 

 just took from 'em. They don't often try it on shooting a 

 man trapping, unless he's quite alone and no chance of it 

 being known he's out— same as they shot Bill Samples on 

 Black Powder Creek, just as he rode into his camp. He 

 got his gun on to one of 'em ; and he was took upon Bill's 

 horse, badly hit through the ribs. But he wouldn't give 

 his pardner away — till the sheriffs gammoned him as Little 

 Wolf (they knowed pretty well it was him) was took and 

 had owned to the killing. Then they had 'em both. 



" I don't know as I wouldn't rayther have Injins than a 

 mean white man. I come nigher being shot by a white 



