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Trapper's Lake lay before him, a beautiful sheet of water, mirroring the black slopes and the fringed spruces and the flat peaks. Over all its gray, twilight-softened surface showed little swirls and boils and splashes where the myriads of trout were rising.
He could always tell when the Pony Express rider was approaching, miles before he was in sight, if in the daytime, and at night many minutes before the old trapper's ears, which were very acute also, could distinguish the slightest sound. The boy was christened "Little Cayuse" because his ears could catch the sound of an approaching horse's foot long before any one else.
The hand connected with the body of a man lying close against the opposite side of the log. The legs from the knees down were gone; the remainder of the man was a mass of burned flesh and rags. Near the stump of the right arm lay a charred kerosene can. Under the trapper's guidance the party left the burned camp behind them.
It was, in truth, a scene of uproarious hilarity; for once the explosion was over, and the woman and children saw there was no danger, and apprehended the character of the performance, they joined unrestrainedly in the Trapper's laughter, in which they were assisted by Wild Bill, as if he were not the victim of his own over-confidence.
In fact, we have in him an illustration of the modern writer who knows he must found his message firmly upon reality. For both Leather-stocking and Chingachgook are true in the broad sense, albeit the white trapper's dialect may be uncertain and the red man exhibit a dignity that seems Roman rather than aboriginal.
The story in its every detail was stamping itself indelibly upon her mind and for the moment even the presence of Starr Wiley was forgotten. "When he reached the trapper's cabin, Gentleman Geoff was blinded by the snow, delirious and half frozen. Hillery took him in, unwrapped the fur pack he carried on his back and discovered the body of little Willa. She had died from exposure."
He can find no place of shelter in all the three hundred and twenty miles which stretch between God's Voice and Crooked Creek, unless he comes here or falls in with some trapper's camp." "Then you have had no one here lately?" "No, I haven't seen an Indian for over a month.
Cutler and the doctor cheered us as we went; and Peter, as the latter told me afterwards, said: "A man who can dwell like an otter, on both land and sea, has two lives." I indorse that saw, he made it himself; it's genuine, and it was like a trapper's maxim. Warn't it?
"There is not a better within ten mile of us," said Big Ben, dismounting. "This is the spot I have been pushing on for all day, so let us to work without delay. We have a hard day before us to-morrow, and that necessitates a hard feed an' a sound sleep to-night. Them's the trapper's cure for all ills." "They cure many ills, doubtless," observed Will, as he removed the saddle from his jaded steed.
Sit ye down, and, after eating of this morsel, tell me, if you can, the name of the creatur' that has bestowed on you its flesh for a meal?" The exercise he had taken, and the sharpness of the wind, proved excellent stimulants; and Paul himself had hardly been in better plight to do credit to the trapper's cookery, than was the lover of nature, when the grateful invitation met his ears.
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