lide into the river," wrote Fraser. "We cut steps into the
declivity, fastened a line to the front of the canoe, with which
some of the men ascended in order to haul it up. .. Our lives hung,
as it were, upon a thread, as the failure of the line or the false
step of the man might have hurled us into eternity.... We had to
pass where no human being should venture.... Steps were formed like
a ladder on the shrouds of a ship, by poles hanging to one another
and crossed at certain distances with twigs, the whole suspended
from the top to the foot of immense precipices, and fastened at
both extremities to stones and trees."

He speaks of the worst places being where these frail swaying ladders
led up to the overhanging ledge of a shelving precipice.

* * * * *

Such were the very real adventures of the trapper's life, a life whose
fascinations lured John Colter from civilization to the wilds again and
again till he came back once too often and found himself stripped,
helpless, captive, in the hands of the Blackfeet.

It would be poor sport torturing a prisoner who showed no more fear than
this impassive white man coolly listening and waiting for them to
compass his death. So the chief dismissed the suggestion to shoot at
their captive as a target. Suddenly the Blackfoot leader turned to
Colter. "Could the white man run fast?" he asked. In a flash Colter
guessed what was to be his fate. He, the hunter, was to be hunted. No,
he cunningly signalled, he was only a poor runner.

Bidding his warriors stand still, the chief roughly led Colter out
three hundred yards. Then he set his captive free, and the exultant
shriek of the running warriors told what manner of sport this was to be.
It was a race for life.

The white man shot out with all the power of muscles hard as iron-wood
and tense as a bent bow. Fear winged the man running for his life to
outrace the winged arrows coming from the shouting warriors three
hundred yards behind. Before him stretched a plain six miles wide, the
distance he had so thoughtlessly paddled between the rampart walls of
the canon but a few hours ago. At the Jefferson was a thick forest
growth where a fugitive might escape. Somewhere along the Jefferson was
his own hidden cabin.

Across this plain sped Colter, pursued by a band of six hundred
shrieking demons. Not one breath did he waste looking back over his
shoulder ti