He suddenly checked himself and began snuffing the air, as though it was tainted with something suspicious.

“I hope I may be shot if there ain’t a camp-fire within two hundred yards of where I am standing.”

He looked sharply around in every direction, but saw nothing of the camp, although positive that his olfactories could not have deceived him.

“Whether it belongs to white or red can’t be said, sartin; but it’s a great deal most likely that it’s red, and it’s just about as sartin that that Injin ahead of me has gone pretty close to the camp, so I’ll keep on follering him.”

A short distance further he became assured that he was in close proximity to the fire, and he began to use extreme caution in his movements.  He knew very well how slight an inadvertence would betray his approach, and a betrayal was almost fatal.  Advancing some distance further, he suddenly came in full view of the camp-fire.  He saw three Indians seated around it, smoking, and appearing as if they had just finished their morning meal.  It seemed, also, as if they were discussing some matter that deeply interested all.  The mumbling of their voices could be heard, and one of them gesticulated quite freely, as though he were excited over the conference.  There was not even the most remote possibility that what they were saying was of the least concern to the trapper; and so, after watching them a few moments, he moved cautiously by.

It was rarely that Tim ever had a mishap at such perilous times as these, but to his dismay something caught his foot so dextrously, that in spite of himself he was thrown flat upon his face.  There was a dull thump, not very loud, it is true, but he feared it had reached the ears of the savages.  He lay motionless, listening for a while, but hearing nothing of their voices or footsteps, he judged that either they had no suspicion of the true cause, or else had not heard him at all.  He therefore rose to his feet and moved on, occasionally glancing back, to be sure he was not pursued.

The trapper proceeded in this manner until noon.  Had the case been urgent, he would not have paused until nightfall, as his indurated muscles demanded no rest; he could go a couple of days without nourishment, and experience little inconvenience.  But there was no call for haste.  He therefore paused at noon, on the banks of a small stream, in quest of some water-fowl.

Tim gazed up and down-stream, but saw nothing that would serve as a dinner.  He could have enticed a fish or two from their element, but he had set his heart upon partaking of a bird, and was not willing to accept anything else.  Accordingly, he began walking down the bank of the creek in search of one.

In such a country as was Minnesota forty years ago, the difficult matter would have been to avoid game rather than to find it.  The trapper had searched but a short distance, when he caught sight of a single ptarmigan under the opposite bank.  In a twinkling Tim’s rifle was raised, and, as it flashed forth its deadly messenger, the bird made a single struggle, and then floated, a dead object, down the current.