fifteen paces
off. There being no alternative, Mansker cocked his piece, and shot the
Indian through the body. The Indian screamed, threw down his gun, and
ran towards camp; passing it he pitched headlong down the bluff, dead,
into the river. The other likewise ran to camp at the sound of the shot;
but Mansker outran him, reached the camp first, and picked up an old gun
that was on the ground; but the gun would not go off, and the Indian
turned and escaped. Mansker broke the old gun, and returned speedily to
his comrades. The next day they all went to the spot, where they found
the dead Indian and took away his tomahawk, knife, and bullet-bag; but
they never found his gun. The other Indian had come back, had loaded his
horses with furs, and was gone. They followed him all that day and all
night with a torch of dry cane, and could never overtake him. Finding
that there were other bands of Indians about, they then left their
hunting grounds. Towards the close of his life old Mansker, like many
another fearless and ignorant backwoods fighter, became so much
impressed by the fiery earnestness and zeal of the Methodists that he
joined himself to them, and became a strong and helpful prop of the
community whose first foundations he had helped to lay.

Sometimes the hunters met Creole trappers, who sent their tallow, hides,
and furs in pirogues and bateaux down the Mississippi to Natchez or
Orleans, instead of having to transport them on pack-horses through the
perilous forest-tracks across the mountains. They had to encounter
dangers from beasts as well as men. More than once we hear of one who,
in a canebrake or tangled thicket, was mangled to death by the horns and
hoofs of a wounded buffalo.[27] All of the wild beasts were then
comparatively unused to contact with rifle-bearing hunters; they were,
in consequence, much more ferocious and ready to attack man than at
present. The bear were the most numerous of all, after the deer; their
chase was a favorite sport. There was just enough danger in it to make
it exciting, for though hunters were frequently bitten or clawed, they
were hardly ever killed. The wolves were generally very wary; yet in
rare instances they, too, were dangerous. The panther was a much more
dreaded foe, and lives were sometimes lost in hunting him; but even with
the panther, the cases where the hunter was killed were very
exceptional.

The hunters were in their lives sometimes clean and straight, and
s