CHAPTER XII.
Departure from the Rendezvous—Trouble in Camp—Leave the Party and Traps—Arrival at the Crow Village—Great Stir among the Crows—Joyful Meeting with my Crow Parents, Brothers, and Sisters—Three Years without seeing a White Man.
I now parted with very many of my friends for the last time. Most of the members of that large company now sleep in death, their waking ears no longer to be filled with the death-telling yell of the savage. The manly hearts that shrunk from no danger have ceased to beat; their bones whiten in the gloomy fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains, or moulder on the ever-flowering prairies of the Far West. A cloven skull is all that remains of my once gallant friends to tell the bloody death that they died, and invoke vengeance on the merciless hand that struck them down in their ruddy youth.
Here I parted from the boy Baptiste, who had been my faithful companion so long. I never saw him again.
The party that I started with consisted of thirty-one men, most of them skilful trappers (Captain Bridger was in our party), and commanded by Robert Campbell. We started for Powder River, a fork of the Yellow Stone, and, arriving there without accident, were soon busied in our occupation.
A circumstance occurred in our encampment on this stream, trivial in itself (for trivial events sometimes determine the course of a man's life), but which led to unexpected results. I had set my six traps over night, and on going to them the following morning I found four beavers, but one of my traps was missing. I sought it in every direction, but without success, and on my return to camp mentioned the mystery.
