Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/359

Rh I wounded my Indian in the leg, and killed his horse. Jim Beckwith said he saw three Indians fall to the ground. This, however, was the last trouble we had with the Crow Indians on that trip.

The next day we arrived at Fort Benton, on the Missouri river. There we met a number of trappers in the employ of the Hudson Bay Company, and not an independent trapper in the outfit. Strange, but true, the trappers in the employ of that Company always hated the sight of an independent trapper.

Here we stayed over two days, trying to gather some information as to our route, and, strange as it may seem, we could not find a man who would give us any information as to the route we wished to go, which was only about two hundred miles from there.

Trapping had never been done in that region, and these men knew that this was because of hostile Indians there. They were not men of sufficient principle to even intimate to us that the Indians were dangerous in that section, but let us go on to find it out for ourselves, hoping, no doubt, that the Indians would kill us and that there would be so many independent trappers out of the way. From here we took the divide between the Missouri river and the Yellowstone, aiming to keep on high land in order to steer clear, as much as possible, of hostile Indians.

Uncle Kit said he was satisfied that there was a large basin somewhere in that country, but did not know just where or how to find it.

It was in the evening of the fifth day when we came upon a high ridge, and almost due west of us and far