Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/112



unruly packhorses heavily laden with camp equipage and Indian goods. All were in fine feather; the capering steeds, the crisp air, the scintillant sun, the tuneful meadow lark, harmonized completely with the bursts of song and gay and lively laughter.

The Willamette was carpeted with green from the early autumn rain. Scarlet-flaming thickets of vine maple glowed along the watercourses. Every hill-slope was a bank of burning ash. The cavaliers were armed to the teeth; from every belt depended a leathern firebag with pipe, tobacco, knife, and flint and steel. There were hunters in that brigade, rough as the grizzlies they hunted; hunters keen as the deer, suspicious as the elk; hunters that read like a book the language of tracks. Leaning over their horses' necks, they could discern the delicate tread of the silver fox, the pointed print of the mink, and the otter's heavy trail. With whip-stock in hand La Framboise points "A bear passed last week," " An elk yesterday," "A deer this morning." In a moment a deer tosses its antlers, sniffs the wind, then bounds with slender, nervous limbs into the thickest shade.

A brisk morning ride over the Scappoose hills and down into the Tualitan plains was followed by a picnic dinner around a gypsy fire, then McLoughlin dismissed the trappers into the Indian country.

The parting cavalcades looked at each other from their curveting steeds. "Beware on the Umpqua," called the doctor. "If the new men get the fever give them plenty of broth and quinine." Again he turned with a parting word and gesture: "Look out for the Rogue-Rivers; they'll steal the very beaver out of your traps."

With gay farewells the fort people galloped back to