No savage eye detected him in his journey upon this log, and, about a week later, he arrived, smiling, at a frontier trading post. “Old Bill” was royally welcomed by his brother trappers, who slapped him on the back, drank his health, not once, but twenty times, and gave him a new rifle which they had just captured from some half-breeds.
“Old Bill” took this with good humor, for it was all in the day’s work of a scout upon the frontier. In a week he left upon another excursion into the wilds, and alone, for he was like a “solitary,” or buffalo bull, who roams the prairie away from the rest of the herd. He preferred to be without associates in his work. “Two men,” said he, “leave a broader trail than one, and there are many Indians in the country. Two men make more noise. I go alone.”
“He was a great hunter,” said an old Indian. “He was a great trapper—took many beaver—and a great warrior, for his belt was full of scalps. But he have no friend: no squaw. Always by himself. He like the eagle in the heavens, or the panther in the mountains. He one strange man.”
Yes, “Old Bill” was a strange man, but he lived his life upon the frontier for many years without a mishap, although his body bore the marks of many an encounter. Silent and taciturn, those who were associated with him knew only of his deeds by the fresh scalps at his girdle, the notches upon the stock of his gun, and the scars upon the exposed portion of his body. His traps yielded him a small living, and with this he seemed to be content.
The trapper lived to be an old man. Although in innumerable skirmishes and hand-to-hand encounters with the Blackfeet, Crows, Sioux, and other wild riders of the plains, he came off scot free until he met a band of Blackfeet when trapping near the headwaters of the Missouri River. Here he was surrounded by twenty or thirty braves, but, by skillfully climbing his pony down the shelving sides of a canyon, made his escape. They found his tracks, however, and followed him like a pack of hounds after a fox.
“Old Bill” still was lithe and active, although sixty years, and more, of age. Again and again he hid himself, and, with two or three shots, laid out as many of the advancing redskins. He was fortunate in being able to keep away from the vindictive warriors for four full days, although wounded twice: an arrow point in his thigh and a bullet through the fleshy part of his leg. Finally, he reached a series of canyons near the Yellowstone, where numerous streams made it possible for him to leave little trace of his trail, and great boulders of rock hid his retreating form. The red men here gave up the chase, for their quarry defied both fatigue and wounds.
“The Great Spirit is still with the Lone Wolf,” said they. “We will let him go, for here he can kill many of us before we can reach him.”
It was November. A bleak wind blew gusts of snow across the sandy plain as the red warriors retreated. “Old Bill” continued on his way into the advancing storm. The white flakes now covered the earth. A bitter wind assailed him, and great piles of drifting snow whirled and eddied about his gaunt and emaciated form. Dismounting under the side of a projecting cliff, he made a fire by means of rubbing two dried sticks together, ate some biltong, which he fortunately had stowed away in a saddle-bag, and lay down to rest. His poor, shivering pony cropped the dry bunches of grass in silent misery.
Two weeks later a party of trappers were crossing the stream near the place where the old fellow had lain down, and saw a pony nibbling the bark from a cottonwood tree. He was gaunt, famished, and his ribs were fairly sticking through his flesh. They rode up to him and were much distressed to see the form of a man lying beneath the white mantle of newly fallen snow. They brushed this away and found “Old Bill;” his grizzled head bent forward upon his breast, and his clothing stained with the wounds which had sapped his very life-blood. He had gone to the Great Beyond.
With tears in their eyes the trappers hollowed out a grave for the lone refugee. Here they buried him, and finding his faithful steed unwilling to leave the place where he had carried his master, shot the emaciated animal. They placed both in the same grave, and over their forms erected a huge pile of stones, not only to mark the last resting-place of “Old Bill,” but also to keep the wolves and coyotes from digging up the remains.