Page:Hugh Pendexter--Kings of the Missouri.djvu/52

 by traders—were St. Louis Creoles. Both types were light-hearted and irresponsible. They were capable of carrying a thousand-foot tow-line the full length of the Missouri, forcing their way through all natural obstacles, but of not much account when the Indians rode along the shores and enfiladed them with arrows and balls and invited them to come up and make a real fight. When it came to battle it was the long-haired and bewhiskered trapper, who would rather walk from St. Louis to the Rockies than to carry a tow-line a day's journey, who would quit his yarning and smoking and gambling to swarm up the bank and debate the matter.

In addition to these well-known specimens of the frontier town there were strangers, easily classified but not to be included in the lists of useful occupations. These were less boisterous than the drunken boatmen, less sleepy and indifferent than the mountain men. They drank with their backs to the wall and out of range of windows. Even when swallowing their fiery potations they did not close the eye or roll it to the ceiling in mute testimony to the liquor's potency. They tipped the glass rather than the head and maintained a level gaze on the door, and ceased