es 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.