378 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Marcu 10, 1906. 

soled moccasins for summer, beautifully em- 
broidered with colored porcupine quills; thick, 
soft, warm ones of buffalo robe for winter. Once, 
and once only, he told me the story of this girl’s 
and his little romance. He was a temperate man 
in all things, but on this particular New Year’s 
night he had taken enough good _ hot-spiced 
Scotch to make him bare his innermost thoughts, 
and I doubt not that those thoughts were mostly 
of the loved one who was dead and gone. 
“T could not help but notice her,” he said, “on 
the first night I stayed in her father’s lodge. She 
was some three years younger than J, yet already 
a woman. Of good height and slender, but weli 
formed figure, comely face and beautiful eyes, 
jong-haired, quick and graceful in all her move- 
ments, she was indeed good to see. I fell into the 
habit of looking at her when I thought no one 
was observing me, and before long I found that 
it suited me better to stay in the lodge where I 
could at least be near her than it did to go hunt- 
ing or on discovery with the men. I was always 
increasingly glad when night came, and I could 
take my place in the lodge opposite her. Thus the 
days and weeks and months went by. I learned 
the language easily, quickly; yet I never spoke to 
her, nor she to me, for, as you know, the Black- 
feet think it unseemly for youths and maidens to 
do so. 
“One evening a man came into the lodge and 
began to praise a certain youth with whom I had 
often hunted; he spoke of his bravery, his kind- 
ness, his wealth, and ended by saying that the 
young fellow presented to Lone Walker thirvy 
horses, and wished, with Ap’-ah-ki, to set up a 
lodge of his own. I glanced at the girl and 
caught her looking at me; such a look! express- 
ing at once fear, despair and something else which 
I dared not believe I interpreted aright. The 
chief spoke: ‘Tell your friend, he said, ‘that all 
you have spoken of him is true; I know that he 
is a real man, a good, kind, brave, generous 
young man, yet for all that I cannot give him my 
daughter.’ 
“Again I looked at Ap’ah-ki, and she at me. 
Now she was smiling, and there was happiness in 
her eyes, along with that same peculiar expres- 
sion which I had before noticed. But if she 
smiled, I could not, for Lone Walker’s words had 
killed any hope I might have had of getting her 
some day for my own. I had heard him refuse 
thirty head of horses. What hope had I then, 
who did not own even the horse I rode? I who 
received for my services only £20 a year, from 
which must be deducted the various articles I 
bought. Surely the girl was not for me. And to 
make it worse, there was that peculiar expression 
in her eyes when she looked into mine which, 
even young and inexperienced in the ways of 
women as I was, I decided meant that she cared 
for me, even as I did for her. I suffered. 
“After that night Ap’-ah-ki no longer cast down 
her eyes when I caught her looking at me, but 
returned my gaze openly, fearlessly, lovingly. 
We now knew that we loved each other. Time 
passed. Going out one evening, she came in just 
as I reached the doorway, and as we passed our 
hands met—and clasped. For an instant we 
stood there, gently but firmly retaining our grasp. 
I trembled. I could feel her muscles also quiver- 
ing. Then some one called out, ‘Shut the door- 
way; the lodge fills with smoke.’ I staggered 
out and sat down on the ground. For hours I 
sat there trying to think of some way to accom- 
plish my desire, but I could find no feasible plan, 
and went miserably to bed. It Was a little later, 
perhaps a couple of weeks, that I met her in the 
trail bringing home a bundle of firewood. We 
stopped and looked at each other in silence for a 
moment, and then I spoke her name. Crash went 
the fuel on the ground, and we embraced and 
kissed, regardless of those who might be looking. 
“7 can stand this’no longer, I said at last: 
‘Come with me now, now, to your father, and I 
will speak to him.’ 
“ Ves,’ she whispered. ‘Yes; let us take cour- 
age, and go to him. He has always been good 
to me, and perhaps he will be generous now.’ 
“So, forgetting the bundle of wood, we went 
hand in hand and stood before Lone Walker, 
where he sat smoking his long pipe, out on the 
shady side of the lodge. ‘I have not thirty 
horses, I said, ‘nor even one, but I love your 
daughter, and she loves me. I ask you to give 
her to me.’ 
“The chief smiled. ‘Why think you, did I re- 
fuse the thirty horses?’ he asked, and before I 
could answer he continued, ‘Because I wanted 
you for my son-in-law; wanted a white man be- 
cause he is more cunning, much wiser than the 
Indian, and I need a counselor. We have not 
been blind, neither I nor my women. We have 
long seen that this day was coming—have waited 
for you to speak the word. You have spoken; 
there is nothing more to say except this: Be 
good to her.’ 
“That very day they set up a small lodge for 
us and stored it with robes and parfleches of 
dried meat and berries, gave us one of their two 
brass kettles, tanned skins, pack saddles, ropes— 
all that a lodge should contain. And, not least, 
Lone Walker told me to choose thirty horses 
from his large herd. In the evening we took pos- 
session of our house and were happy.” 
The old man paused and sat silent, thinking 
of the old days. 
“T know how you felt,’ I said, “for we are ex- 
periencing the same thing.” 
“T know it,’ he continued, “seeing the peace 
and contentment and happiness in this lodge, I 
could not help telling you about my own youth- 
ful days.” 
After he had gone I told Nat-ah’-ki all that he 
had said. It affected her deeply, for when I had 
ended I saw tears in her eyes, and she said over 
and over again, “Oh, how I pity him! Oh, how 
lonely he is.” 
The next evening when he had come in and 
taken his accustomed seat. Nat-ah’-ki went over 
and kissed him, kissed him twice. “That,” she 
said, brokenly, “is because my man has told me 
all that you told him last night; because’—— 
but she could say no more. 
Rising Wolf bent his head and I could see his 
bosom heave, the tears dropping down his smooth 
shaven cheeks. Perhaps there was a queer lump 
in my throat. Presently he straightened up, 
gently laid his hands on the little woman’s head 
and said, “I pray God that you may live long, 
and that you may always be as happy as you 
are now.” 
Morroe remained in the service of the Hud- 
son’s Bay Company a number of years, raising a 
large family of boys and girls, most of whom are 
alive to-day. The eldest, John, is about seventy- 
five years of age, but still young enough to go up 
in the Rockies near his home every autumn and 
kill a few bighorn and elk, and trap a few 
beavers. The old man never revisited his home; 
never saw his parents after the day they parted 

with him at the Montreal docks. He intended to 
return to them for a brief visit some time, but 
kept deferring it, and then came letters, two years 
old, saying that they were both dead. Came also 
a letter from an attorney, saying that they had 
bequeathed him a considerable property, that he 
must go to Montreal and sign certain papers in 
order to take possession of it. At the time the 
factor of Mountain Fort, Hardesty by name, was 
going to England on leave of absence; to him 
Monroe gave power of attorney in the matter. 
Hardesty never returned, and by virtue of the 
papers he had signed, the frontiersman lost his 
inheritance. But that was a matter of little 
moment to him then. Had he not a lodge and 
family, good horses and a vast domain wherein 
to wander, actually teeming with game—what 
more could one possibly want? But the day 
came, as you shall later learn—days of want and 
distress to most of us, when the loss of his 
estate was bitterly deplored, and Hardesty’s soul 
consigned to the lowest depths of hell. 
Leaving the Hudson’s Bay Company, Monroe 
sometimes worked for the American Fur Com- 
pany, but mostly as a “free trapper,’’ wandered 
from the Saskatchewan to the Yellowstone, and 
from the Rockies to Lake Winnipeg. The head- 
waters of the South Saskatchewan were one of 
his favorite hunting grounds. Thither in the 
early ’50s he guided the noted Jesuit Father De 
Smet, and at the foot of the beautiful lakes lying 
just south of Chief Mountain they erected a huge 
wooden cross, and named the two bodies of water 
St. Mary’s Lakes. One winter after his sons, 
John and Francois, had married, they were camp- 
ing there for the season, the three lodges of the 
family, when one night a large war party of As- 
sinaboines attacked them. The daughters, Lizzie, 
Amelia and Mary, had been taught to shoot, and 
together they made a brave resistance, driving 
the Indians away just before daylight with the 
loss of five of their number, Lizzie killing one of. 
them as he was about to let down the bars of the 
horse corral. 
Besides other furs, beaver, fisher, martin and 
wolverines, they killed more than three hundred 
wolves that winter, by a device so unique yet 
simple, that it is well worth recording. By the 
banks of the outlet of the lakes they built a log 
pen twelve by sixteen feet at the base, and slop- 
ing sharply inward and upward to a height of 
seven feet; the top of the pyramid was an open- 
ing about two and one-half feet wide by eight 
in length. Whole deer, quarters of buffalo, any 
kind of meat handy, was thrown into the pen, and 
the wolves, scenting the flesh and blood, seeing 
it plainly through the four to six inch spaces be- 
tween the logs, would eventually climb to the top 
and jump down through the opening. But they 
could not jump out, and there morning would 
find them uneasily pacing around and around in 
utter bewilderment. Powder and ball were 
precious commodities in those days, so the trap- 
pers killed the wolves with bow and arrows, and 
opening a door at one end, they allowed the 
coyotes to escape. The carcasses of the slain 
wolves were always thrown into the river as soon 
as skinned, so that there should be nothing of a 
suspicious nature about. 
Dear old Rising Wolf! He was always be- 
moaning the decadence of the Indians—the Pie- 
gans in particular. “You should have seen them 
in the long ago,” he would say, “Such a proud 
and brave people they were. But now, whisky is 
their curse. There are no longer any great 
