“‘Again I looked at Ap-ah’-ki and she at me. Now she was smiling and there was happiness in her eyes. But if she smiled I could not. I had heard him refuse thirty head of horses. What hope had I then, who did not even own the horse I rode? I, who received for my services only twenty pounds a year, from which must be deducted the various articles I bought. Surely the girl was not for me. I suffered.
“‘It was a little later, perhaps a couple of weeks, that I met her in the trail, bringing home a bundle of fire-wood. We stopped and looked at each other in silence for a moment, and then I spoke her name. Crash went the fuel on the ground, and we embraced and kissed regardless of those who might be looking.
“‘So, forgetting the bundle of wood, we went hand in hand and stood before Lone Walker, where he sat smoking his long pipe, out on the shady side of the lodge.
“‘The chief smiled. “Why, think you, did I refuse the thirty horses?” he asked, and before I could answer: “Because I wanted you for my son-in-law, wanted a white man because he is more cunning, much wiser than the Indian, and I need a counselor. We have not been blind, neither I nor my women. There is nothing more to say except this: be good to her.”
“‘That very day they set up a small lodge for us, and stored it with robes and parfleches of dried meat and berries, gave us one of their two brass kettles, tanned skins, pack saddles, ropes, all that a lodge should contain. And, not least, Lone Walker told me to choose thirty horses from his large herd. In the evening we took possession of our house and were happy.’
“Monroe remained in the service of the Hudson’s Bay Company a number of years, raising a large family of boys and girls, most of whom are alive to-day. The oldest, John, is about seventy-five years of age, but still young enough to go to the Rockies near his home every autumn, and kill a few bighorn and elk, and trap a few beavers. The old man never revisited his home; never saw his parents after they parted with him at the Montreal docks. He intended to return to them for a brief visit some time, but kept deferring it, and then came letters two years old to say that they were both dead. Came also a letter from an attorney, saying that they had bequeathed him a considerable property, that he must go to Montreal and sign certain papers in order to take possession of it. At the time the factor of Mountain Fort was going to England on leave; to him, in his simple trustfulness Monroe gave a power of attorney in the matter. The factor never returned, and by virtue of the papers he had signed the frontiersman lost his inheritance. But that was a matter of little moment to him then. Had he not a lodge and family, good horses and a vast domain actually teeming with game wherein to wander? What more could one possibly want?
“Leaving the Hudson’s Bay Company, Monroe sometimes worked for the American Fur Company, but mostly as a free trapper, wandered from the Saskatchewan to the Yellowstone and from the Rockies to Lake Winnipeg. The headwaters of the South Saskatchewan were one of his favorite hunting grounds. Thither in the early fifties he guided the noted Jesuit Father, De Smet, and at the foot of the beautiful lakes just south of Chief Mountain they erected a huge wooden cross and named the two bodies of water Saint Mary’s Lakes.” Here the Canada and United States boundary climbs the Rocky Mountains.
“One winter after his sons John and François had married they were camping there for the season, the three lodges of the family, when one night a large war party of Assiniboins attacked them. The daughters Lizzie, Amelia and Mary had been taught to shoot, and together they made a brave resistance, driving the Indians away just before daylight, with the loss of five of their number, Lizzie killing one of them as he was about to let down the bars of the horse corral.
“Besides other furs, beaver, fisher, marten and wolverine, they killed more than three hundred wolves that winter by a device so unique, yet simple, that it is well worth recording. By the banks of the outlet of the lakes they built a long pen twelve by sixteen feet at the base, and sloping sharply inward and upward to a height of seven feet. The top of the pyramid was an opening about two feet six inches wide by eight feet in length. Whole deer, quarters of buffalo, any kind of meat handy was thrown into the pen, and the wolves, scenting the flesh and blood, seeing it plainly through the four to six inch spaces between the logs would eventually climb to the top and jump down through the opening. But they could not jump out, and there morning would find them uneasily pacing around and around in utter bewilderment.
“You will remember that the old man was a Catholic, yet I know that he had much faith in the Blackfoot religion, and believed in the efficiency of the medicine-man’s prayers and mysteries. He used often to speak of the terrible power possessed by a man named Old Sun. ‘There was one,’ he would say, ‘who surely talked with the gods, and was given some of their mysterious power. Sometimes of a dark night he would invite a few of us to his lodge, when all was calm and still. After all were seated his wives would bank the fire with ashes so that it was as dark within as without, and he would begin to pray. First to the Sun-chief, then to the wind maker, the thunder and the lightning. As he prayed, entreating them to come and do his will, first the lodge ears would begin to quiver with the first breath of a coming breeze, which gradually grew stronger and stronger till the lodge bent to the blasts, and the lodge poles strained and creaked. Then thunder began to boom, faint and far away, and lightning dimly to blaze, and they came nearer and nearer until they seemed to be just overhead; the crashes deafened us, the flashes blinded us, and all were terror-stricken. Then this wonderful man would pray them to go, and the wind would die down, and the thunder and lightning go on rumbling and flashing into the far distance until we heard and saw them no more.’”