THE TRAPPERS.
The new arrivals resembled Burt Hawkins in their dress and
accoutrements. They wore coon-skin caps, hunting dress, leggings, coarse
shoes, etc., and each carried a long rifle and hunting knife as his
weapons. They were rugged, powerful fellows, whose long experience in
the wilderness had given them a knowledge of its ways and mysteries,
beyond that of ordinary men. They were hardy and active, with the
faculties of hearing, seeing and smelling cultivated to a point almost
incredible. They contrasted with Hawkins in one respect; both wore their
faces smooth. Although far removed from civilization, they kept
themselves provided with the means of shaving their cheeks. Perhaps
through indifference, their beards were sometimes allowed to grow for
weeks, but they made sure they were in presentable shape when they rode
into the trading post of St. Louis, with their peltries, and, receiving
pay therefor, joined their families in that frontier town.
The three men had been hunters and trappers for many years. Sometimes
they pursued their work alone, and sometimes in the company of others.
They trapped principally for beavers and otters, though they generally
bagged a few foxes and other fur-bearing animals. A hundred years ago,
there were numerous beaver runs in the central portions of our country,
and for a long time many men were employed in gathering their valuable
furs, hundred and thousands of which were brought from the mountain
streams and solitudes of the West to St. Louis, whence they were sent
eastward and distributed.
The trapper's pursuit has always been a severe one, for, aside from the
fierce storms, sudden changes, and violent weather, the men as a rule
were exposed to the rifles of lurking Indians, who resented the
intrusion of any one into their territory. And yet there was an
attraction about the solitary life, far beyond the confines of
civilization, which took men from their families and buried them in the
wilderness, frequently for years at a time. It is not difficult to
understand the fascination which kept Daniel Boone wandering for months
through the woods and cane-brakes of Kentucky, without a single
companion and with the Indians almost continually at his heels.
When Burt Hawkins and his two friends left St. Louis, late in summer or
early in the fall, each rode a mule or horse, besides having two pack
animals to carry their supplies and peltries. They followed some faintly
marked trail, made perhaps by the hoofs of their own animals, and did
not reach their destination for several weeks. When they halted, it was
among the tributaries of the Missouri, which have their rise in the
Ozark range in the present State of Missouri.
The traps and implements which from time to time were taken westward,
were not, as a matter of course, brought back, for that would have
encumbered their animals to no purpose. When warm weather approached and
the fur bearers began shedding their hair, the traps were gathered and
stowed away until needed again in the autumn. Then the skins that had
been taken from time to time through the winter, were brought forth and
strapped on the backs of the animals, and the journey homeward was
begun. There was no trouble for the trappers to "float their sticks,"
as the expression went; for the Northwest Fur Company and other wealthy
corporations had their agents in St. Louis and at other points, where
they were glad to buy at liberal prices all the peltries within reach.
No trapper was likely to accumulate wealth by the method named, but it
cost him little to live, and frequently during the summer he found some
other employment that brought return for his labor.
Hawkins, Kellogg and Crumpet were on their way home, having started a
little later than their custom, and they had reached the point referred
to on the preceding night, when they halted and went into camp. In the
morning, when they began to reload their animals, it was found that a
rifle belonging to Kit Kellogg was missing. It had been strapped on the
package which one of the mules carried, but had worked loose and fallen
unnoticed to the ground. It was too valuable to be abandoned, and Kit
and Crumpet started back to hunt for it. They went on foot, leaving the
animals cropping some succulent grass a short distance away.
The quadrupeds underwent a hard time during the winter, when grass was
scanty, so that such halts were appreciated by them. The spot where they
were grazing was far enough removed to screen them from the sight of
Deerfoot, when he was reconnoitering the camp. While two of the company
were hunting for the weapon, the third remained behind, smoking his
pipe, and, when the time came, prepared dinner against the return of the
other ones. The meat was good, but not so delicate as the beaver tails
on which they frequently feasted during the cold season.
It has been said more than once that the Indians along the western bank
of the Mississippi were less aggressive than those who so often
crimsoned the soil of Kentucky and Ohio with the blood of the pioneers.
Such was the truth, but those who were found on the very outermost
fringe of civilization, from far up toward the headwaters of the
Yellowstone down to the Gulf, were anything but harmless creatures. As
the more warlike tribes in the East were pushed over into that region,
they carried their vindictive natures with them, and the reader knows
too well the history of the great West to require anything further to
be said in that direction.
When Hawkins went to the beaver-runs with his friends in the autumn
preceding his meeting with Deerfoot, he had as his companions, besides
the two named, a third--Albert Rushton, who, like the others, was a
veteran trapper. One snowy day in mid-winter, when the weather was
unusually severe, he started on his round of his division of the traps
and never came back. His prolonged absence led to a search, and his dead
body was found beside one of the demolished traps. The bullet hole
through his forehead and the missing scalp that had been torn from his
crown, told plainly the manner of his death.
This was a shocking occurrence, but the fate of Rushton was that to
which every one of his friends was liable, and they did not sit down and
repine over what could not be helped. The saddest thought connected with
the matter was that one of the three must break the news to the invalid
wife, who lived with her two children in one of the frontier settlements
through which they passed on the way to St. Louis.
When Deerfoot told Hawkins the others were returning, the trapper
turned his head and saw that Kellogg had found the missing rifle. The
couple looked sharply at the warrior as they advanced, and evidently
were surprised to see him in camp. Kellogg and Crumpet were men in
middle life, strong limbed, sinewy and vigilant.
Deerfoot rose from the log whereon he was sitting, and extended his hand
to each in turn, as Hawkins pronounced his name. Kit Kellogg scrutinized
him and shook his hand with considerable warmth. Crumpet did the same,
though with less cordiality in his manner. It was plain (and plainer to
none than Deerfoot) that he was one of that numerous class of
frontiersmen who regard the American Indian as an unmitigated nuisance,
which, so far as possible, every white man should do his utmost to
abate. He had been engaged in more than one desperate encounter with
them and his hatred was of the most ferocious nature. It was not to be
expected, however, that his detestation would show itself without regard
to time and place. Kellogg and Hawkins watched him with some curiosity,
as he extended his horny hand and shook that of the handsome Indian
youth.
"You've heard of Deerfoot," added Burt, as he proceeded to divide the
enormous piece of meat into quarters; "he is the youngster that helped
Colonel Preston and his friends from the Wyandots at the time the
block-house was burned."
"How should we hear of it," asked Crumpet with a growl, "when we was on
this side of the Mississippi?"
"Wasn't I over in Kentucky about three years ago? I rather think I was,
and would have been froze to death with Simon Kenton and a few of the
other boys if it hadn't been for this copper-colored rascal--ain't that
so, Deerfoot?"
And that the young warrior might not err as to the one who was expected
to impart light on the subject, Burt gave him a resounding whack on the
shoulder that almost knocked him off the log. The youth was in the act
of conveying some of the meat to his mouth when saluted in that fashion,
and it came like the shock of an earthquake.
"Why can't you talk with a fellow," asked Kellogg, "without breaking his
neck?"
"Whose neck is broke?"
"Why that fellow's is pretty well jarred."
"Well, as long as _he_ don't object I don't see what it is to _you_,"
was the good-natured response of Hawkins, who resumed chewing the juicy
meat.
"Some of these days, somebody will give you a whack in return when you
ain't expecting it, and it will be a whack too that will cure you of
that sort of business. I believe, Deerfoot, that you are a Shawanoe,
ain't you?"
"Deerfoot is a Shawanoe," was the answer, his jaws at work on the food
just furnished him.
"I've heard tell of you; you're the chap that always uses a bow and
arrow instead of a gun?"
The youth answered the query by a nod of the head. As he did so, Tom
Crumpet, who sat further away, vigorously working his jaws, uttered a
contemptuous grunt. Kit turned his head and looked inquiringly at him.
"Maybe you think he can't use the bow and arrow. I s'pose, Deerfoot,
that's the bow you fired the arrow through the window of the block-house
that was nigh a hundred yards off, with a letter tied around it, and
fired it agin out on the flatboat with another piece of paper twisted
around it--isn't that so?"
Despite his loose-jointed sentences, Deerfoot caught his meaning well
enough to nod his head in the affirmative.
"Did you see it done?" asked Crumpet, with a grin at Hawkins.
"How could I see it when I wasn't there?"
"I guess no one else was there," growled Tom; "I've noticed whenever
that sort of business is going on it's always a good ways off, and the
people as sees it are the kind that don't amount to much in the way of
telling the truth."
These were irritating words, made more so by the contemptuous manner in
which they were spoken. Deerfoot clearly understood their meaning, but
he showed no offence because of them. He was not vain of his wonderful
skill in woodcraft, and, though he had a fiery temper, which sometimes
flashed to the surface, he could not be disturbed by any slurs upon his
attainments.
Kit Kellogg was impatient with his companion, but he knew him so well
that he did not discuss the matter. Had not the beard of Burt Hawkins
hidden his countenance, the others would have perceived the flush which
overspread it. He was angered, and said, hotly:
"It might do for some folks to say that other folks didn't tell the
truth, but I don't think _you're_ the one to say it."
Crumpet champed his meat in silence, using his hunting knife for fork
and knife, and drinking water from the tin cup which he had filled a
short distance away, and from which the others, excepting Deerfoot, also
drank. Instead of answering the slur of Hawkins, he acted as though he
did not fully catch his meaning, and did not care to learn. What he had
said, however, rankled in the heart of Burt, who, holding his peace
until all were through eating, addressed the surly fellow:
"If you doubt the skill of Deerfoot, I'll make you a wager that he can
outshoot you, you using your gun and he his bow and arrow, or you can
both use a gun."
"He might do all that," said Kellogg, with a twinkle of the eye, "and it
wouldn't prove that Tom was any sort of a marksman."
Crumpet was able to catch the meaning of that remark, and it goaded him
almost to the striking point.