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.  Reynal looked after them with his face of brutal selfishness.

“Well,” he said, “if they are killed, I shall have the beaver.  They’ll fetch me fifty dollars at the fort, anyhow.”

This was the last I saw of them.

We had been for five days in the hunting camp, and the meat, which all this time had hung drying in the sun, was now fit for transportation.  Buffalo hides also had been procured in sufficient quantities for making the next season’s lodges; but it remained to provide the long slender poles on which they were to be supported.  These were only to be had among the tall pine woods of the Black Hills, and in that direction therefore our next move was to be made.  It is worthy of notice that amid the general abundance which during this time had prevailed