the Mississippi;
but after the Mackinaw was absorbed by the aggressive American Fur
Company, the free hunters were pushed westward. On the Lower Missouri
competition raged from 1810, so that circumstances drove the free
trapper westward to the mountains, where he is hunting in the twentieth
century as his prototype hunted two hundred years ago.

In Canada--of course after 1870--he entered the mountains chiefly by
three passes: (1) Yellow Head Pass southward of the Athabasca; (2) the
narrow gap where the Bow emerges to the plains--that is, the river where
the Indians found the best wood for the making of bows; (3) north of the
boundary, through that narrow defile overtowered by the lonely
flat-crowned peak called Crows Nest Mountain--that is, where the
fugitive Crows took refuge from the pursuing Blackfeet.

In the United States, the free hunters also approached the mountains by
three main routes: (1) Up the Platte; (2) westward from the Missouri
across the plains; (3) by the Three Forks of the Missouri. For instance,
it was coming down the Platte that poor Scott's canoe was overturned,
his powder lost, and his rifles rendered useless. Game had retreated to
the mountains with spring's advance. Berries were not ripe by the time
trappers were descending with their winter's hunt. Scott and his
famishing men could not find edible roots. Each day Scott weakened.
There was no food. Finally, Scott had strength to go no farther. His men
had found tracks of some other hunting party far to the fore. They
thought that, in any case, he could not live. What ought they to do?
Hang back and starve with him, or hasten forward while they had
strength, to the party whose track they had espied? On pretence of
seeking roots, they deserted the helpless man. Perhaps they did not come
up with the advance party till they were sure that Scott must have died;
for they did not go back to his aid. The next spring when these same
hunters went up the Platte, they found the skeleton of poor Scott sixty
miles from the place where they had left him. The terror that spurred
the emaciated man to drag himself all this weary distance can barely be
conceived; but such were the fearful odds taken by every free trapper
who went up the Platte, across the parched plains, or to the head waters
of the Missouri.

The time for the free trappers to go out was, in Indian language, "when
the leaves began to fall." If a mighty hunter like Colter, the trapper
was to