one swift horse under
him and another swift one as a relay, galloped back to the _rendezvous_.

But the Blackfeet were ever on guard at the mountain passes like cats at
a mouse-hole. Fitzpatrick had ridden into a band of hostiles before he
knew the danger. Vaulting to the saddle of the fresh horse, he fled to
the hills, where he lay concealed for three days. Then he ventured out.
The Indians still guarded the passes. They must have come upon him at a
night camp when his horse was picketed, for Fitzpatrick escaped to the
defiles of the mountains with nothing but the clothes on his back and a
single ball in his rifle. By creeping from shelter to shelter of rugged
declivities where the Indian ponies could not follow, he at last got
across the divide, living wholly on roots and berries. Swimming one of
the swollen mountain rivers, he lost his rifle. Hatless--for his hat had
been cut up to bind his bleeding feet and protect them from the
rocks--and starving, he at last fell in with some Iroquois hunters also
bound for the _rendezvous_.

The convoy under Sublette had already arrived at Pierre's Hole.

The famous battle between white men and hostile Blackfeet at Pierre's
Hole, which is told elsewhere, does not concern the story of rivalry
between mountaineers and the American Fur Company. The Rocky Mountain
men now realized that the magical A. F. C. was a rival to be feared and
not to be lightly shaken. Some overtures were made by the mountaineers
for an equal division of the hunting-ground between the two great
companies. These Vanderburgh and Drips rejected with the scorn of utter
confidence. Meanwhile provisions had not come for the American Fur
Company. The mountaineers not only captured all trade with the friendly
Indians, but in spite of the delay from the fight with the Blackfeet got
away to their hunting-grounds two weeks in advance of the American
Company.

What the Rocky Mountain men decided when the American Company rejected
the offer to divide the hunting-ground can only be inferred from what
was done.

Vanderburgh and Drips knew that Fitzpatrick and Bridger had led a picked
body of horsemen northward from Pierre's Hole.

If the mountaineers had gone east of the lofty Tetons, their
hunting-ground would be somewhere between the Yellowstone and the
Bighorn. If they had gone south, one could guess they would round-up
somewhere about Salt Lake where the Hudson's Bay[34] had been so often
"relieved" of their fur