disasters marked the wane of the Missouri Company.

But like the shipwrecked sailor, no sooner safe on land than he must to
sea again, the indomitable Andrew Henry linked his fortunes with General
Ashley of St. Louis. Gathering to the new standard Campbell, Bridger,
Fitzpatrick, Beckworth, Smith, and the Sublettes--men who made the Rocky
Mountain trade famous--Ashley and Henry led one hundred men to the
mountains the first year and two hundred the next. In that time not less
than twenty-five lives were lost among Aricaras and Blackfeet. Few pelts
were obtained and the expeditions were a loss.

But in 1824 came a change. Smith met Hudson's Bay trappers loaded with
beaver pelts in the Columbia basin, west of the Rockies. They had become
separated from their leader, Alexander Ross, an old Astorian. Details of
this bargain will never be known; but when Smith came east he had the
Hudson's Bay furs. This was the first brush between Rocky Mountain men
and the Hudson's Bay, and the mountain trappers scored.

Henceforth, to save time, the active trappers met their supplies
annually at a _rendezvous_ in the mountains, in Pierre's Hole, a broad
valley below the Tetons, or Jackson's Hole, east of the former, or
Ogden's Hole at Salt Lake. Seventeen Rocky Mountain men had been
massacred by the Snake Indians in the Columbia basin; but that did not
deter General Ashley himself from going up the Platte, across the divide
to Salt Lake. Here he found Peter Ogden, a Hudson's Bay trapper, with an
enormous prize of beaver pelts. When the Hudson's Bay man left Salt
Lake, he had no furs; and when General Ashley came away, his packers
were laden with a quarter of a million dollars worth of pelts. This was
the second brush between Rocky Mountain and Hudson's Bay, and again the
mountaineers scored.

The third encounter was more to the credit of both companies. After
three years' wanderings, Smith found himself stranded and destitute at
the British post of Fort Vancouver. Fifteen of his men had been killed,
his horses taken and peltries stolen. The Hudson's Bay sent a punitive
force to recover his property, gave him a $20,000 draft for the full
value of the recovered furs, and sent him up the Columbia. Thenceforth
Rocky Mountain trappers and Hudson's Bay respected each other's rights
in the valley of the Columbia, but southward the old code prevailed.
Fitzpatrick, a Rocky Mountain trader, came on the same poor Peter Ogden
at Salt Lake trading w