Chapter XX.—With the Fur Traders.
NOT long after the events related in the last chapter, our four friends—Dick, and Joe, and Henri, and Crusoe—agreed to become for a time members of Walter Cameron’s band of trappers. Joe joined because one of the objects which the traders had in view was similar to his own mission — namely, the promoting of peace among the various Indian tribes of the mountains and plains to the west. Joe, therefore, thought it a good opportunity of travelling with a band of men who could secure him a favourable hearing from the Indian tribes they might chance to meet with in the course of their wanderings. Besides, as the traders carried about a large supply of goods with them, he could easily replenish his own nearly exhausted pack by hunting wild animals and exchanging their skins for articles he might require.
Dick joined because it afforded him an opportunity of seeing the wild, majestic scenery of the Rocky Mountains and shooting the big-horned sheep which abounded there, and the grizzly “bars,” as Joe named them, or “Caleb,” as they were frequently styled by Henri.
Henri joined because it was agreeable to the inclination of his own rollicking, blundering, floundering, crashing disposition, and because he would have joined anything that had been joined by the other two.
Crusoe’s reason for joining was single, simple, easy to be expressed, easy to be understood, and commendable. He joined because Dick did.
The very day after the party left the encampment where Dick had shot the grizzly bear and the deer, he had the satisfaction of bringing down a splendid specimen of the big-horned sheep. It came suddenly out from a gorge of eht mountain, and stood upon the giddy edge of a tremendous precipice, at a distance of about two hundred and fifty yards.
“You could not hit that,” said a trapper to Henri, who was rather fond of jeering him about his short-sightedness.
“Non!” cried Henri, who didn’t see the animal in the least; “say you dat? ve shall see;” and he let fly with a promptitude that amazed his comrades, and with a result that drew from them peals of laughter.
“Why, you have missed the mountain!”
