For the rest of the year he would be lounging about the
fort, or encamped with his friends in its vicinity, lazily hunting or
enjoying all the luxury of inaction; but when once in pursuit of beaver,
he was involved in extreme privations and desperate perils. When in
the midst of his game and his enemies, hand and foot, eye and ear, are
incessantly active. Frequently he must content himself with devouring
his evening meal uncooked, lest the light of his fire should attract
the eyes of some wandering Indian; and sometimes having made his rude
repast, he must leave his fire still blazing, and withdraw to a distance
under cover of the darkness, that his disappointed enemy, drawn thither
by the light, may find his victim gone, and be unable to trace his
footsteps in the gloom. This is the life led by scores of men in the
Rocky Mountains and their vicinity. I once met a trapper whose breast
was marked with the scars of six bullets and arrows, one of his arms
broken by a shot and one of his knees shattered; yet still, with the
undaunted mettle of New England, from which part of the country he had
come, he continued to follow his perilous occupation. To some of the
children of cities it may seem strange that men with no object in
view should continue to follow a life of such hardship and desperate
adventure; yet there is a mysterious, restless charm in the basilisk eye
of danger, and few men perhaps remain long in that wild region without
learning to love peril for its own sake, and to laugh carelessly in the
face of death.

On the last day of our stay in this camp, the trappers were ready for
departure. When in the Black Hills they had caught seven beaver, and
they now left their skins in charge of Reynal, to be kept until their
return. Their strong, gaunt horses were equipped with rusty Spanish bits
and rude Mexican saddles, to which wooden stirrups were attached, while
a buffalo robe was rolled up behind them, and a bundle of beaver traps
slung at the pommel. These, together with their rifles, their knives,
their powder-horns and bullet-pouches, flint and steel and a tincup,
composed their whole traveling equipment. They shook hands with us and
rode away; Saraphin with his grim countenance, like a surly bulldog's,
was in advance; but Rouleau, clambering gayly into his seat, kicked his
horse's sides, flourished his whip in the air, and trotted briskly over
the prairie, trolling forth a Canadian song at the top of his lungs.