"All right Casse-tête. And you?"
"It's a long time since you lost your charger, friend," said Hugh.
"Ah, yes," said Baptiste, "I never shall have another one as good. The one you saw me make and that the boy has on his shirt, was good for nothing. I have had no luck since I lost the old one. At first things went well, and I thought I should be rich, but soon trouble came, and has been coming ever since."
"How did you lose the charger?" said Hugh.
"That morning when I left the fort, I went north to the big lakes and trapped along them, and one day, on one of the little streams, I found a piece of gold; a small piece as large as my finger nail. I began to look for more, and to wash the bars, and there, for a little while and in one place, I found much gold. I stayed there until my grub gave out and my ammunition too, for in crossing a stream my animal fell and wet my powder. I started to come in for supplies, and one day, as I was travelling along, the Indians jumped me and I had to run. They had cut me off from the fort, and I ran east keeping ahead of them during the day, but at night they would catch up. At last, when I was southeast of the Bear Paws, my horses were getting tired and the Indians came so close to me, that they began to shoot. I had but a few charges left in my horn, and couldn't fight. Finally, they came so close that they killed my pack animal, and an arrow went through my shoulder. One or two of them had guns and kept shooting at me, but they did not hit me; they crowded me though, and now I had to run to the river to hid in the breaks, where I could slip away on foot without being trailed.
"This I did, but when I got in among the mauvaises terres, the Indians stopped behind, and then I found that my gold, which I had been running to save, was gone. I had had it on my saddle, and a ball had cut the strings and it had dropped off; also my horse had been wounded and could travel no more, and I was bleeding and growing weak. Along the shore I found a drift log, and that night, tying my gun to it, I pushed it off into the deep water and got on it, and floated down the stream.
"That was the last I knew for a long time. When I next had sense, I was in the camp of two trappers at the mouth of the stream, they call 'Judith.' They told me, that one day, weeks before, they had seen something queer coming down the stream, and at length, saw that it was a man on a log; one of the men swam out with a rope and brought the stick to shore, and me with it. But they said I was crazy. They said, too, that I had many wounds that I had not known of and one of them was a cut on the head where a ball had glanced.
"Since that time my mind is no longer good. Sometimes, for a long time, I don't know anything. Sometimes I can't remember the things that happened yesterday, but the old things, those that happened before that time, I remember well; and so it is, Casse-tête, that I know you, even if your hair is white; but I have always thought of you as young and strong and a breaker-in of bulls' heads;" and the old man laughed pleasantly.
Jack and Joe did not understand everything of what was said, but Hugh, as he listened to this story, seemed to become very grave and sad.
"And what do you do now, Baptiste?" he asked. "We no longer trap beaver. How do you live?"