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.
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