might last for several seasons. At such a game the
snipers on the banks, concealed as they would be, could reasonably be
expected to run up quite a list of casualties on the boat. This was no
new experience for him and he knew that nothing serious would grow out
of it as long as none of the Indians were injured. This little party was
composed of the renegade scourings of the frontier tribes which had been
debauched by their contact with the liquor-selling whites and they were
more fitted for petty thievery than the role of warriors. He shouted and
argued and cursed and pleaded with the eager riflemen, most of whom
burned with the remembrance of stolen packs of furs and equipment at the
hands of such Indians as these.

The growling plainsmen, knowing that he was right and understanding his
position, reluctantly kept their trigger fingers extended and finally
lowered their pieces, hoping that the Indians would lose their heads and
do some overt act; but the Indians were not fools, whatever else they
might have been. With eager alertness on one side and sullen
acquiescence on the other the wooding was finished, ropes cast off and
the _Missouri Belle_ pushed quickly out into the stream, her grim faced
defenders manning the stern decks and praying for an excuse to open
fire.

No sooner had a reasonable distance been opened between the boat and the
bank than the Indians, at a signal from their leader, leaped behind the
woodpile and opened fire on the boat with muskets and bows and arrows,
the latter weapons far more accurate than the miserable trade guns which
a few of the braves carried. With them dropping an arrow is an instinct
and they have developed it to a degree that is remarkable, to say the
least; while with the smooth-bore trade guns, with varying charges of
trade powder and sizes of balls, they were poor shots at any distance.
Instantly two score rifles replied from the boat, pouring their leaden
hail into the stacked wood, but without any noticeable result; and
before a second round could be fired the distance had been increased to
such an extent that only one or two excitable tenderfeet tried a second
shot. The chief result of the incident was the breaking of the monotony
of the trip and the starting of chains of reminiscences among the
hunters and trappers to which the tenderfeet listened with eager ears.

After this flurry of excitement interest slowly swung far astern, where
the American Fur Company's boat w