There was no trouble for the trappers to "float their sticks,"
as the expression went; for the Northwest Fur Company and other wealthy
corporations had their agents in St. Louis and at other points, where
they were glad to buy at liberal prices all the peltries within reach.

No trapper was likely to accumulate wealth by the method named, but it
cost him little to live, and frequently during the summer he found some
other employment that brought return for his labor.

Hawkins, Kellogg and Crumpet were on their way home, having started a
little later than their custom, and they had reached the point referred
to on the preceding night, when they halted and went into camp. In the
morning, when they began to reload their animals, it was found that a
rifle belonging to Kit Kellogg was missing. It had been strapped on the
package which one of the mules carried, but had worked loose and fallen
unnoticed to the ground. It was too valuable to be abandoned, and Kit
and Crumpet started back to hunt for it. They went on foot, leaving the
animals cropping some succulent grass a short distance away.

The quadrupeds underwent a hard time during the winter, when grass was
scanty, so that such halts were appreciated by them. The spot where they
were grazing was far enough removed to screen them from the sight of
Deerfoot, when he was reconnoitering the camp. While two of the company
were hunting for the weapon, the third remained behind, smoking his
pipe, and, when the time came, prepared dinner against the return of the
other ones. The meat was good, but not so delicate as the beaver tails
on which they frequently feasted during the cold season.

It has been said more than once that the Indians along the western bank
of the Mississippi were less aggressive than those who so often
crimsoned the soil of Kentucky and Ohio with the blood of the pioneers.
Such was the truth, but those who were found on the very outermost
fringe of civilization, from far up toward the headwaters of the
Yellowstone down to the Gulf, were anything but harmless creatures. As
the more warlike tribes in the East were pushed over into that region,
they carried their vindictive natures with them, and the reader knows
too well the history of the great West to require anything further to
be said in that direction.

When Hawkins went to the beaver-runs with his friends in the autumn
preceding his meeting with Deerfoot, he had as his companions, besides
the two na