. That is, they were carrying only a little salt
and tea and tobacco. For the rest, they were depending on their muskets.
Game had not been plentiful.

Between the prairie and "the Mountains of the Setting Sun"--as the
Indians call the Rockies--a long line of tortuous, snaky red crawled
sinuously over the crests of the foothills; and all game--bird and
beast--will shun a prairie fire. There was no wind. It was the dead hazy
calm of Indian summer in the late autumn with the sun swimming in the
purplish smoke like a blood-red shield all day and the serpent line of
flame flickering and darting little tongues of vermilion against the
deep blue horizon all night, days filled with the crisp smell of
withered grasses, nights as clear and cold as the echo of a bell. On a
windless plain there is no danger from a prairie fire. One may travel
for weeks without nearing or distancing the waving tide of fire against
a far sky; and the four trappers, running short of rations, decided to
try to flank the fire coming around far enough ahead to intercept the
game that must be moving away from the fire line.

Nearly all hunters, through some dexterity of natural endowment,
unconsciously become specialists. One man sees beaver signs where
another sees only deer. For Ba'tiste, the page of nature spelled
_B-E-A-R_! Fifteen bear in a winter is a wonderfully good season's work
for any trapper. Ba'tiste's record for one lucky winter was fifty-four.
After that he was known as the bear hunter. Such a reputation affects
keen hunters differently. The Indian grows cautious almost to cowardice.
Ba'tiste grew rash. He would follow a wounded grisly to cover. He would
afterward laugh at the episode as a joke if the wounded brute had treed
him. "For sure, good t'ing dat was not de prairie dat tam," he would
say, flinging down the pelt of his foe. The other trappers with Indian
blood in their veins might laugh, but they shook their heads when his
back was turned.

Flanking the fire by some of the great gullies that cut the foothills
like trenches, the hunters began to find the signs they had been
seeking. For Ba'tiste, the many different signs had but one meaning.
Where some summer rain pool had dried almost to a soft mud hole, the
other trappers saw little cleft foot-marks that meant deer, and prints
like a baby's fingers that spelled out the visit of some member of the
weasel family, and broad splay-hoof impressions that had spread under
the weight a