the shooting flames were a rallying
call.

In the most perilous regions the trapper travelled only after nightfall
with muffled paddles--that is, muffled where the handle might strike the
gunwale. Camp-fires warned him which side of the river to avoid; and
often a trapper slipping past under the shadow of one bank saw hobgoblin
figures dancing round the flames of the other bank--Indians celebrating
their scalp dance. In these places the white hunter ate cold meals to
avoid lighting a fire; or if he lighted a fire, after cooking his meal
he withdrew at once and slept at a distance from the light that might
betray him.

The greatest risk of travelling after dark during the spring floods
arose from what the _voyageurs_ called _embarras_--trees torn from the
banks sticking in the soft bottom like derelicts with branches to
entangle the trapper's craft; but the _embarras_ often befriended the
solitary white man. Usually he slept on shore rolled in a buffalo-robe;
but if Indian signs were fresh, he moored his canoe in mid-current and
slept under hiding of the driftwood. Friendly Indians did not conceal
themselves, but came to the river bank waving a buffalo-robe and
spreading it out to signal a welcome to the white man; when the trapper
would go ashore, whiff pipes with the chiefs and perhaps spend the night
listening to the tales of exploits which each notch on the calumet
typified. Incidents that meant nothing to other men were full of
significance to the lone _voyageur_ through hostile lands. Always the
spring floods drifted down numbers of dead buffalo; and the carrion
birds sat on the trees of the shore with their wings spread out to dry
in the sun. The sudden flacker of a rising flock betrayed something
prowling in ambush on the bank; so did the splash of a snake from
overhanging branches into the water.

Different sorts of dangers beset the free trapper crossing the plains to
the mountains. The fur company brigades always had escort of armed guard
and provision packers. The free trappers went alone or in pairs,
picketing horses to the saddle overlaid with a buffalo-robe for a
pillow, cooking meals on chip fires, using a slow-burning wormwood bark
for matches, and trusting their horses or dog to give the alarm if the
bands of coyotes hovering through the night dusk approached too near. On
the high rolling plains, hostiles could be descried at a distance,
coming over the horizon head and top first like the peak of a s