Читать книгу Fur Brigade - Hal G. Evarts - Страница 5

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Hunter joyously bucked the muddy tide of the Missouri on the first lap of his journey, the third that he had made to its headwaters. He was off on a two-years' trapping expedition, having joined the brigade that General Ashley, head of the Rocky Mountain Company, was conducting up the river. The brigade was to ascend the distant Yellowstone and scatter along its two chief southern tributaries, the Powder River and the Bighorn, and trap their creeks. The following summer they would collect in small bands or travel singly and make their way to the appointed rendezvous. There they would meet other mountain men who were trapping for the company from the Sweetwater to the Musselshell; from the Niobrara to the Snake River and the shores of Great Salt Lake, west of the Great Divide.

The six heavily loaded bateaux took advantage of a fair wind and hoisted sail. The forests on either shore of the river were still drab and colorless, composed of gaunt and tangled skeletons that had not yet sent forth, the first budding green shoots of spring. The bateaux put ashore at the big flat where the waters of the Kansas River emptied into the Missouri. The flat was graced by the log structures of Ely's Fort, a trading post operated in the interests of the Rocky Mountain Company. Not many years thereafter this spot was to become known as Westport Landing, destined eventually to be the jumping-off place for the overland stampeders of the California gold rush; for the wagon trains of the Oregon emigrants that were to settle Oregon and claim it for the Union; for the tremendous bull-train trade that was to spring up with New Mexico by the way of Sante Fe trail; for many of the disciples of Joseph Smith, exiled from Nauvoo, Illinois and joining the great Mormon migration that was to result in the settlement of Utah; for the Free-Staters who would pass through the slave State of Missouri to settle the Kansas prairies, and for the members of many another historic movement that was to play a part in the shaping of the West. But now it was well beyond the jumping-off place itself, a mere outpost of civilization on the flat where, a scant half-dozen years before, there had been only the lodges of the Kaw or Kansas Indians.

The thirty-odd men who had just ascended from St. Louis were joined by almost as many more at Ely's post. Some of these last had been left here the preceding fall to guard the horses and to secure more from the Indians. A great quantity of white corn liquor had been distilled for the Indian trade and the reunited voyageurs kindled a huge fire and broached a keg of whisky preparatory to an all-night spree. As the revelry progressed, the trappers, in imitation of Indian practice, weaved round the camp fire with the hop, shuffle and chant of the scalp dance and the war dance.

Dubois, the Frenchman from St. Louis, was a member of the party that had remained in charge of the horses. Hunter, after drinking throughout the night with his companions, withdrew to one side at dawn, in company with Ashley, Dubois and another voyageur and proceeded to cook breakfast.

A weird figure rode across the flat. At first glance the four men at the fire mistook him for an Indian. He was hatless, his skull shaved except for a scalp lock. So diminutive of size was the stranger that he might have been mistaken for a half-grown lad except for his wrinkled countenance. He addressed the quartet in English, identifying himself as a white man who had "gone Injun." His case was not unusual. The great majority of the fur brigaders took Indian wives. Many, for the purpose of furthering trade or for greater safety when trapping, lived in various Indian villages. Some few, discarding all civilized customs, went over to the savages in every particular. It was from the latter element that the renegade was to spring; for the renegade was destined, in the not distant future, to play his bloody part west of the Mississippi as in the immediate past he had left his hideous trail east of it. Not all white men who went Indian, however, were renegades, save in the sense that they had deserted their own race to adopt the ways of the savages. Some of them exerted constructive and beneficial influence upon the tribes with which they affiliated.

Kentuckians, however, had been treated to too many frightful examples of the ways of renegades to view any man who had gone Indian without acute suspicion. Fresh in every Kentuckian's mind was the record of the monstrous Simon Girty, who for thirty years had led the Indians against the settlers of Ohio and Kentucky and built up a total of more massacres, torturings and atrocities than could be ascribed to any half-dozen Indian chiefs that America had produced. And the fiendish Girty had only recently met his just deserts.

The newcomer gave his name as Haddock and stated that he was now a sub-chief of the Loup Pawnees. His Indian name was Little Bull Buffalo, which, he assured them, had been bestowed upon him from the fact that though small in stature, he was mighty in battle. His undersized frame seemed charged with compact energy and he was endowed with the agility of an ape. He had left his own tribe and had wandered widely, he explained, and now wished to accompany the brigade upriver as a protection against the Sioux, with whom his own nation, the five allied tribes of the Pawnees, was at war.

Breckenridge, questioning Haddock about the unexplored regions, found that the little man virtually had a map of the stream lines from the Canadian River in the southwest to the Green River west of the Rocky Mountains etched upon his brain. Hunter, his Kentucky-bred suspicion of white Indians waning, began to feel a curious friendship for Little Bull Buffalo of the Loup Pawnees.

There was great bustle of preparation, as the brigade was to set forth at dawn of the following day. Toward nightfall, a group of trappers stood watching a distant bateau move up the river toward Ely's Fort.

"Big Mack's outfit," one of them stated.

Hunter straightened suddenly to attention. Where went McKenzie, there also went Big Mack's daughter, Nepanamo, Hair-that-shines. Hunter had seen the girl but twice since the night of that first meeting on the Missouri—once in St. Louis and once on the Osage River. He stood watching that approach of the bateau, listening meanwhile to the comments of the trappers.

McKenzie, a dyed-in-the-wool Britisher at heart, made no effort to conceal the fact that he considered all American colonists as traitors who had deserted the mother country. Some day, he was quite certain, the rebellious colonies would be soundly chastised and be brought back under the British flag. The open expression of such sentiments, coupled with the fact of his long association with the Northwest Fur Company, chief competitor of the two big rival companies, the Rocky Mountain and the Great American, that operated under the American flag in the West, had not smoothed the way for Big Mack to secure any very responsible position with either of the two latter companies. He had served both of them on occasion, but only at posts well removed from regions where the Northwest Company operated. The heads of the two American fur companies were not above suspecting that a former henchman of the great Northwest Company might be tempted to divert to it the trade of the Indians of his vicinity instead of striving to retain it for some American concern. Big Mack, still further embittered against Americans by this attitude, was now heading back to his old range in the far Northwest. Not one among the trappers knew his plans. It seemed not so much that there was any intentional secrecy veiling McKenzie's destination, they said, as that the old man himself seemed rather vague upon that score. He spoke hazily of setting up for himself as a free trader in some indefinite locality.

Hunt Breckenridge watched the bateau effect a landing. That night he sat again at the McKenzie camp fire.

"You remember him, Father—Hunter Breckenridge?" the girl said, when Big Mack accorded their visitor a mere absent-minded nod.

McKenzie peered more closely at their guest. His stubborn old eyes lightened with brief amusement.

"Sure enough, Hair-that-shines," he said, dropping an affectionate hand upon his daughter's shoulder. "Sure enough! If 'tain't our young firebrand that brang us the turkey five year back—and threatened Leroux with his gun; growed up now to six foot and more."

Thereafter, according to his usual custom, he retired to the shelter of his own brooding thoughts and sucked comfortably at his pipe, paying little heed to what transpired about him. He had aged noticeably, Hunter thought. The girl Nepanamo had developed into a tall, powerful woman, lithe as a panther and with the strength of a man. The girl herself knew little of her father's plans beyond the fact that Leroux was to meet them on the Upper Missouri and that they were to travel north to the prairies of Saskatchewan before settling the details of his project.

"If you're anywheres in the Northwest, I'll be finding you there," Hunter said in parting. "Till then, Hair-that-shines."

"I'll be expecting you," she said. But she knew that Big Mack would not tolerate any save the most casual acquaintance between his daughter and any rebel American. "Be sure to come," she nevertheless called after him.

Hunter learned from General Ashley that the McKenzie bateau was to accompany the Rocky Mountain brigade upriver for protection against savages. In the same breath he detailed Breckenridge as one of the hunters of the party. Thus it happened that when the brigade got under way at dawn, Ann McKenzie's eyes roved over the throng of men in vain as she sought for a glimpse of the tall Kentuckian. The bateaux were loaded down with trade goods and supplies and launched upon the current of the Missouri. Half a hundred horses were packed and headed upriver under the care of a score or more of mounted men. With this latter contingent rode the squaws of such voyageurs as had Indian wives with them.

Ashley had detailed eight men, four to each shore of the river, to ride a day in advance of the brigade. These were the hunters who were to kill the meat for the party. Since the brigade would live almost entirely off the country as it progressed, whenever the hunters should fail in their appointed task the main party would go hungry. Because of their peculiar expertness as hunters and their resourcefulness in coping with savages, Hunt Breckenridge, Dubois and a trapper named Brady had been detailed to one shore of the river. With them, largely for the reason that Hunter was friendly to him while the other Kentuckians in the brigade eyed askance his shaved skull and scalp lock, rode Haddock, Little Bull of the Loup Pawnees.

The quartet left Ely's Fort three hours before dawn. From the outset, game abounded in unbelievable profusion, but they did no shooting until shortly after noon when they neared the spot which Ashley had designated as the point where the brigade would camp on the first night out from the mouth of the Kansas. The hunters scattered through a timbered bottom. Breckenridge, observing tawny bodies ahead of him among the trees, dismounted and advanced on foot. He came within sixty yards of a band of elk, drew a bead behind one's shoulder and the animal went down. Before stirring from his tracks, he reloaded and carefully primed his piece. This was the inevitable custom of the pioneer. While dressing the elk he heard the scattered reports of his companions' guns. Two black bears raced past him but the distance was too great for accurate shooting. A band of deer drew near and halted to look back. Again he fired and felled a buck, reloaded and advanced to dress it. While so engaged, he observed several flocks of turkeys moving toward him and presently he potted a big gobbler. He packed half of the elk upon his horse, took the deer intact upon his own shoulders and advanced to the point which had been designated by Ashley. Then he returned for the turkey and the rest of the elk meat.

Big red fox squirrels were numerous in the timber and coveys of quail flushed from every thicket. Flocks of ducks and geese winged up and down the river or bobbed on the surface of the water. Upon his return to the river it was to find that his companions had brought in their first load of meat and had gone back for more. He waited there, seated on a down log and smoking his Pipe, as he gazed contentedly out across the sinuous flow of the Missouri. The hunters returned with their second load. The kill consisted of two elk, five deer, four turkeys, a raccoon and a small black bear.

Then the hunters resumed their way up the river, not halting to make camp until nightfall. Thereafter, they would have no way of knowing at what point the brigade would camp. It would depend wholly upon the nature of the going encountered by the packers and their horses, upon the difficulties of wind and current encountered by the boatmen. There would be long stretches where a line could be attached to the prow of each bateau and its upstream progress aided by horses that traveled unobstructed shore lines; other days when the nature of the terrain would prohibit such means of assistance from ashore. At times, the land party would cut off across big bends of the river and gain a half-day's march on the boats. There would be periods when, with a fair wind, sails would be hoisted on the bateaux and the boats would leave the packers a day's march behind.

The hunters, therefore, shot game at various points along the river and left the meat on the banks, where it could be located by the boatmen as they passed. On the second day's march the hunters encountered vast herds of buffalo that grazed on the prairies. Scores of wolves were hanging about the buffalo herds. Wolf hides were just coming into demand by the fur companies and as a consequence the great campaign of wolf poisoning that was soon to begin and which would last for half a century was not yet under way; the wolves, therefore, were plentiful, and it was not unusual for Breckenridge to see upwards of a hundred of the big gray killers of the prairies in the course of one day's ride.

The buffalo were quite thin as the first faint trace of green was only now beginning to tint the tawny prairies as the new spring grass pushed through. Their meat was tough and stringy, almost unfit for consumption. Then, too, except when coming to the river to drink or to swim the stream, the buffalo herds fed back on the open prairies, some little distance from the river. The deer and elk were in somewhat better shape and these animals haunted the timber along the stream and the meat had to be packed but a short distance. Thus there was a double reason why the hunters chose them instead of the buffalo.

Hunter selected a spot where a creek emptied into the river and the hunters made camp an hour before sundown on the third night out. The horses were hobbled and turned out to graze on a tongue of prairie between the timber that flanked the courses of creek and river. Dubois killed the elk within two hundred yards of camp. Breckenridge set forth to prospect up the creek for beaver sign. He encountered two bands of elk that grazed near the edge of the timber. Deer bounded away on every hand and big flocks of turkeys were numerous.

Even at that early date, the first thousand or more miles of the Lower Missouri and the mouths of its tributary streams had been heavily trapped by the members of the fur brigades that passed up and down its course. The beaver, once to be found in such vast numbers, were already disappearing from its waters. There were no signs of flourishing colonies on the creek but beaver cuttings were sufficiently in evidence to indicate the presence of a few of those animals. Breckenridge discovered an old dam that had been repaired. It backed up the water, transforming a willow slough into a beaver pond. He examined the signs round the pond; only one stray pair had taken up residence there, he judged.

He stiffened suddenly to attention. Five sleek heads marred the surface of the water, each leaving a furrow in its wake. The otters emerged from the pond and played along the dam. The watching man did not make a move until one of the animals ventured ashore. Then he shot it dead in its tracks and the remaining four disappeared on the instant. He heard Dubois shoot again as he returned to camp. The Frenchman had killed a large, almost white wolf, one of four that had crossed through the strip of prairie near the camp.

The two men selected the choice cuts of the elk, skinned the wolf and the otter and returned to camp. They dined on elk steaks and strong tea, then sat for a space before the fire.

Dubois, with a reminiscent chuckle, mentioned that Leroux, Big Mack's former chief assistant, was again to join out under the leadership of his old chief. Hunter nodded. He held no grudge against Leroux. To one who, from infancy, had viewed warfare as part of the day's affairs, there was little of malice expended upon former adversaries. Most of the voyageurs of the West viewed the matter in that light, cherishing no particular enmity against any tribe of Indians with which they might have had a brush. The Blackfeet proved the exception to this more or less general rule. The Blackfeet hunted trappers ceaselessly and by way of retaliation, the trappers, whenever the odds against them was too great, hunted Blackfeet as they hunted wolves and cherished a sincere loathing for that tribe. Hunter, despite the fact that he and Brady had had two sanguinary encounters with Blackfeet on the Flathead River two years before, took the matter impersonally and had not yet developed any particular antipathy toward the Blackfeet such as he had felt for the Sauks in his youth. And so far as treasuring malice against Leroux on account of their one exchange of words, it was far from his thoughts—foreign, indeed, to his whole philosophy of life. With active warfare ever looming as the prospect for the immediate future, life was too short to waste in cherishing resentment over hostilities that had occurred in the past.

"Hees one bad rascal, thees Leroux," Dubois declared.

Little Bull glanced up quickly at the name.

"Leroux? What Leroux—the one whose Indian name is Loup?"

"Never heard his Injun name," Breckenridge replied. "Is he one of your Loup Pawnees? Loup means wolf in the Pawnee tongue, don't it, Little Bull? Your branch of the tribe is the one I've heard trappers call the Wolf Pawnees."

"Yes—it means wolf," Little Bull agreed. "But Leroux ain't no Loup Pawnee."

"He sure enough looks like a wolf in the face," Hunter said. "Likely the Indians do call him that. Every mountain man has got from one to a dozen Injun titles." Breckenridge himself, in fact, was known the length of the Missouri by a many-syllabled Indian name of peculiar meaning. Many in the brigade addressed him by his Indian title, frequently in a spirit of good-natured raillery. "Is this Leroux a former mate of yours, Little Bull?"

"No—by gar!" Haddock denied. "I've heered strange rumors among the Pawnees about a man named Leroux. Likely it's a different party. The name ain't noways uncommon."

He declined to go into detail as to the nature of the rumors he had heard.

The seventh day out from the mouth of the Kansas the four hunters decided to wait for the arrival of the brigade in order to make sure that they were not traveling too far in advance of it. Hunter shot an elk at the edge of the timber and there the quartet made camp. About noon, Breckenridge glanced up to see a mounted warrior on a rise of ground a half mile away. The Indian signalled and was presently joined by others. They continued to pop up on the sky line until fifty or more mounted savages were clustered there.

"Iowas," Breckenridge said, and Haddock nodded confirmation of the pronouncement.

"Hunting party, likely," Hunter amplified. "Their village is along the river somewhere's close, I reckon. Maybe they've moved it down a hundred miles or so from where they were a-holding out last year."

The smoke of the hunters' fire had attracted the Indians. Presently the Iowas raced their ponies furiously across the prairies. When within a few yards of the fire they pulled their horses back upon their haunches and slid to the ground. The four hunters were surrounded by fifty-odd Iowa bucks, hungry as usual. Breckenridge invited them to eat. They devoured the generous roasts of elk meat that had been placed over the fire, then fell upon the remains of the elk. With knives and war hatchets, the carcass was hacked to shreds and devoured to the last morsel. The offal, which had been removed and cast to one side by the whites in dressing the animal, was likewise apportioned and consumed. Entrails of fresh-killed game were considered a special delicacy by all savage tribes of the West.

The head man of the party explained that his followers had set out to kill buffalo for the village but that the herds had moved back some fifteen miles from the river. Ever ready to alter their plans at a moment's notice, it was suggested that the whites accompany them back to the Iowa village instead, killing such elk and deer as were available along the river en route and they would call off the buffalo hunt until a later date.

The four white hunters rode ahead, their weapons being far superior to the bows, arrows, lances and smooth-bore muskets of the Indians. Hunter, jumping a black bear in the timber, dropped the animal with a single shot through the shoulders. He reloaded and rode on, without even pausing to dress the animal, leaving that task to the Iowas who came on behind. Off to the right, riverward, he heard the report of Brady's rifle and that of Dubois; the heavy boom of Haddock's sounded off to the left. A half mile farther on he rode among a band of elk in a thicket and dropped the nearest animal in its tracks. Game was abundant and very tame in the timbered bottoms. Every few hundred feet some creature, deer, elk or turkey, fell to Hunter's rifle fire. The reports of his companions' rifles testified by their frequency that the kill would be of generous proportions.

The party entered the Iowa village in jubilant spirits. The squaws and children were dispatched to retrieve such meat as had not been brought in by the hunting party. Lashing travois poles to half-wild ponies, the squaws set forth.

Hunt Breckenridge repaired to the chief's lodge, made him a present of tobacco and a bright cotton handkerchief, presented each of his three squaws with a few beads, and settled down to listen to the inevitable complaint. It was not long in coming, deferred only until Breckenridge and the Iowa chief had passed the red-stone pipe—charged with a mixture of trade tobacco and the dried inner bark of the red willow—from one to another perhaps half a dozen times and partaking of a few brief whiffs on each occasion.

"Things must change," the Iowa then asserted. "This can not go on. Already the beaver is gone from the land of the Iowas. The first traders to come urged my people to secure many beaver pelts, which they did, and the white men gave trade goods for them. They lived in peace, as brothers. Then more white men came and trapped the beaver themselves, giving nothing in exchange. They trapped too well. The beaver has gone. Still the white traders urge us to collect many beaver pelts. But how can my young men take beaver pelts when the beaver is no more? And without beaver pelts, how are my warriors to secure the guns and other weapons necessary to protect our lodges and our women against enemies that have armed themselves by trading with the whites? The white man traps too well. The Indians have lived here always, yet the beaver numbered more than the hairs in a buffalo robe when the first white men came to the Missouri. My life was more than half spent before the first white came up the river. Yet in that short time, the beaver has gone from the country of the Iowas. It is not good."

Breckenridge, in reply to this lengthy harangue, declared that the Iowa chief spoke straight words. There was no doubt but that the beaver had disappeared from the lower Missouri, he said, but that was only a temporary state of affairs. They would come in from other regions and repopulate the streams until once again the Iowas could listen at night to the whack of the beaver's tail upon the waters throughout the land. This was by way of being somewhat of a formula by which the white traders answered the general complaint that was prevalent among the tribes of the Lower Missouri.

In common with all voyageurs, Hunter believed that the vast uncharted areas of Upper Louisiana held an inexhaustible supply of fur. In any event, it was the business of the men employed by the Rocky Mountain Company to search out spots where beaver were plentiful, not to concern themselves about districts where fur was scarce.

Toward nightfall of the following day, the land contingent of the brigade came into view and the flotilla of bateaux was discernible far down the river. Hunter had told the Iowas that the brigade would trade for forty bushels or more of Indian corn, which amount had been unearthed by the squaws. The village was thrown into a state of high excitement. Squaws and children hurried to the banks of the river. When the boats were still a quarter of a mile distant, Hunter could distinguish the uncovered yellow hair of Ann McKenzie among the fur-capped heads in Big Mack's bateau.

As the boats prepared to make a landing, the girl's glance roved over the weaving throng on shore until her eyes came to rest upon a tall, rangy figure. She watched the man who stood motionless among the restless ones, the long rifle resting in the crook of his arm, and averted her gaze only when the bateau drew in to shore.

Hunter had small desire to attend the council that would be held that night. It would be but a repetition of the harangue in which he and the Iowa chief had indulged the night before. A strong guard was detailed to watch the equipment and supplies. The horses were not only hobbled but were placed under the protection of a strong detail that was to ride herd on them throughout the night. Pilfering, and particularly horse stealing, was so much a part of Indian custom, even among those whom they hailed as friends, that no chances could be taken. Hunter sat with Ann McKenzie at the separate fire that had been kindled by the members of Big Mack's bateau. When he believed it so late that she might wish to retire, Breckenridge moved over to the nearest of the three fires round which the men of the brigade were grouped.

The girl did not immediately seek her robes but instead sat gazing into her fire. There was a strip of darkness between her and the fire where Hunter sat. She did not face him but could almost feel his regard spanning that bridge of obscurity and resting upon her with almost the palpable touch of a caressing hand. She was inured to the stares of male humanity; the invitational glances of the men in the towns that she had visited; the curious, appraising stares of the bucks in many an Indian village; the gaze—admiring, respectful, inflamed or predatory and all shades in between—accorded her by the half-wild rivermen and voyageurs of the fur brigades.

Someway, however, the quiet, unobtrusive regard of this tall Kentuckian seemed subtly different. She recalled the night of their first meeting when, as a boy, he had appeared unannounced at their camp fire on the Lower Missouri and had riveted his spellbound gaze upon her throughout his visit; and, a shade less openly, on the occasion of their few subsequent meetings. There was some quality in his regard that seemed to set it apart from that of all other men. She sensed in it something almost of devoteeism, as if he came to worship at her shrine. Some primitive spark deep within her warmed in response to it. Presently she retired to the darkness beyond the light shed by her fire and spread her blankets and buffalo robes.

The Iowas, as was customary with many Western tribes, offered the hospitality of their respective lodges to such of the white visitors as roused their individual regard. This hospitality, once extended, was understood to encompass the sharing of all family privileges, including the society of the wives and sisters of the particular buck who offered to open his lodge to some particular white man. To the voyageurs of the fur brigade, this was commonplace enough, merely the customary thing in entertainment.

However, to the few among the voyageurs who did not avail themselves of these opportunities, such an invitation became an actual embarrassment. The Indian who extended it considered that his honor was at stake. If the white man declined, the savage mind ascribed it to one of two reasons—either that he scorned the Indian who made the offer or that the woman found no favor in the white man's eyes. In nearly every instance, the Indian's self-respect was bolstered by ascribing it to the latter cause, with the consequence that, since the woman found no favor with the white man, she was forthwith viewed with less favor by her spouse. The result was that a wife so declined by a white visitor was all too frequently sold to any party who would purchase her. Often, in his shame, the husband would beat most severely the luckless one whose favors had been spurned.

Indians moved among the groups round the fires, inviting those of the whites who took their fancy to reside for the night in their respective lodges. More frequently than not the female who was deemed the most attractive of the household accompanied the lord and master, in order that the prospective guest might succumb the quicker.

Ann McKenzie had cruised with the fur brigades since infancy and this custom was an old tale to her. Indeed, she had become so inured to it that she gave it little thought except for an occasional moment of thankfulness that the way of the white man with his women was the profound opposite of that which obtained among the Indians of the West.

She became conscious of a sudden hush among the group round the fire next to that of her own party and propped herself upon one elbow to determine what had stilled their tongues. A sub-chief of the Iowas stood there among the seated figures of the voyageurs, and with him stood an Indian woman, young and comely and adorned in the finery that bespoke a well-to-do warrior for a husband. She could not be over seventeen or eighteen years of age. The Iowa buck had come with his youngest and most attractive wife for the purpose of inviting some trapper to share the hospitality of his teepee for the duration of his stay in the Iowa village.

The white girl was about to return to her pillow with unassumed indifference when a sudden cold ache struck at her very heart. The Iowa was accosting Hunter Breckenridge. Without the least warning, the white girl was assailed by a blazing hatred for the tall Kentuckian, for the Iowa buck and for the comely Indian girl who smiled her shy invitation to Breckenridge. Out in the darkness, the lips of the girl who watched this tableau at the fire seemed to dry and parch, the constriction of her throat was akin to physical pain. She herself was at a loss to account for the intensity of the emotion which assailed her. She had seen this thing occur a thousand times before, so commonplace a thing that she had given it scarcely a thought. Someway, it had seemed a custom that did not touch her own life in the least, something with which she was no more concerned than with the customs of birds and beasts. Why, then, should this one occurrence affect her so strangely? She could not answer her own bewildered query. The soft, drawling tones of the tall Kentuckian, always seeming to play strange and alluring tunes upon her heart strings, now seemed to sear that same heart with living fire as he smiled and addressed the young Iowa woman and her brave. His words reached her but she did not know the Iowa tongue. Presently he would rise and accompany the pair to the warrior's lodge. A savage desire to kill both Breckenridge and the young Iowa woman swept through Ann McKenzie with such intensity as to leave her weak and shaken.

The Iowa had drawn himself into a pose that was pregnant with offended dignity. The Indian girl lowered her head as if in shame, her eyes upon her moccasins as one of them traced a restless pattern on the ground. Then the old trapper, Brady, addressed the Iowa. The watching girl saw Brady gesture toward Hunter Breckenridge, making use of the many-syllabled Indian name by which she had heard many of the men refer to Breckenridge. The meaning of the name she did not know. The Indian seemed to drop his mantle of offended dignity and to regard Hunter with fresh interest. The downcast eyes of the Indian girl were now lifted. She asked Hunter a question, giggling as she spoke, and at his reply there was a roar of laughter from the mountain men. The Iowa joined heartily in the general merriment, and Ann McKenzie's grief and rage reached a pitch that seemed unbearable agony.

Then Dubois spoke to the Iowa. The two conversed jerkily, apparently in amicable argument, for a space of two minutes. Then the Indian trapper departed with a new trade gun, a war ax, three pieces of bright cloth and a pound measure of powder. The Iowa girl settled herself down contentedly beside Dubois. The watching white woman did not know the language in which the deal had been transacted but she had witnessed so many similar transactions that she was well aware of its portent. Dubois had purchased the Iowa woman from the warrior and she would now proceed upriver with the brigade as the Frenchman's wife. But just where had Hunter Breckenridge come in on this transaction?

A youth who was making his first trip up the Missouri made inquiry as to the substance of the conversation and as to the meaning of Hunters' Indian name, which apparently had affected the Iowa buck so pleasantly. Brady, the old trapper, explained.

"That there name is in the Snake dialect. They give it to Hunt first. But he's knowed by it the length of the Missouri—a natural cu'r'osity. It means 'Man-takes-no-woman.' Soon as I called him by name, it healed the ruffled dignity of that savage. It ain't any disgrace for any one woman to be spurned by a party who's notorious for scorning all women. See? That's what it was all about."

"What was it she asked and Hunter answered that struck you as so all-fired humorous?" the lad inquired.

"Sh—Sonny!" Brady waggishly admonished. "Injun ladies discuss matters with menfolks that ain't spoke above a whisper in proper circles. It ain't fitten for youngsters' ears."

Ann McKenzie, gazing up at the sky, was equally bewildered at the sudden peace of soul that had superseded her unaccountable fit of rage and pain. What ailed her, anyhow? She felt suddenly protective toward the new young wife of Dubois and decided that she would be-friend the girl during the trip upriver. Two warm drops splashed down her cheeks. But it was not raining, for the stars were shining bright in the sky above her bed.