s by the mountaineers. If they had gone west,
their destination must be on the Columbia or the Snake. If they went
north, they would trap on the Three Forks of the Upper Missouri.

Therefore Vanderburgh and Drips cached all impedimenta that might hamper
swift marching, smiled to themselves, and headed their horses for the
Three Forks of the Missouri.

There were Blackfeet, to be sure, in that region; and Blackfeet hated
Vanderburgh with deadly venom because he had once defeated them and
slain a great warrior. Also, the Blackfeet were smarting from the
fearful losses of Pierre's Hole.

But if the Rocky Mountain men could go unscathed among the Blackfeet,
why, so could the American Fur Company!

And Vanderburgh and Drips went!

Rival traders might not commit murder. That led to the fearful ruin of
the lawsuits that overtook Nor' Westers and Hudson's Bay in Canada only
fifteen years before.

But the mountaineers knew that the Blackfeet hated Henry Vanderburgh!

Corduroyed muskeg where the mountaineers' long file of pack-horses had
passed, fresh-chopped logs to make a way through blockades of fallen
pine, the green moss that hangs festooned among the spruce at
cloudline broken and swinging free as if a rider had passed that way,
grazed bark where the pack-saddle had brushed a tree-trunk, muddy
hoof-marks where the young packers had balked at fording an icy stream,
scratchings on rotten logs where a mountaineer's pegged boot had
stepped--all these told which way Fitzpatrick and Bridger had led their
brigade.

Oh, it was an easy matter to scent so hot a trail! Here the ashes of a
camp-fire! There a pile of rock placed a deal too carefully for nature's
work--the cached furs of the fleeing rivals! Besides, what with canon
and whirlpool, there are so very few ways by which a cavalcade can pass
through mountains that the simplest novice could have trailed
Fitzpatrick and Bridger.

Doubtless between the middle of August when Vanderburgh and Drips set
out on the chase and the middle of September when they ran down the
fugitives the American Fur Company leaders had many a laugh at their own
cleverness.

They succeeded in overtaking the mountaineers in the valley of the
Jefferson, splendid hunting-grounds with game enough for two lines of
traps, which Vanderburgh and Drips at once set out. No swift flight by
forced marches this time! The mountaineers sat still for almost a week.
Then they casually moved down the Jefferso