By right, the treaty of joint occupation had reference only to Washington and Oregon; but who was to prevent McLeod leading his brigade down the coast to California as far as Sacramento, or Ogden his brigade up the Snake as far as the Nevada deserts, or Ross his mountaineers through Washington and Idaho over the Bitter Root and Rocky Mountains to the buffalo plains of the Missouri in Montana? It was a no-man’s-land, where trappers might wander whither their beaver quest led, with no other law but what each man’s right arm was strong enough to enforce. Fish diet palled at Fort Vancouver. Buffalo meat was needed for the brigades. Up at Fort Okanogan was Alexander Ross, studying the language of the mountain Indians, leading a lonely existence “with no other company,” as he relates, “but my dog Weasel and the Bible.” A mid-winter express brought Ross orders to proceed over the mountains by way of Clarke’s Fork or Flathead River to the headwaters of the Missouri and Yellowstone and Big Horn. His hunting field was the very stamping ground of the most dangerous warriors among the Indians--the Blackfeet and Piegans and Crows. Yet if this express had ordered Ross to march down to Hell’s Gate and jump over the precipice into that cañon, he would have obeyed. A better man for the field could not have been chosen. Ross had come to the Pacific on John Jacob Astor’s first ship. He had been almost at once sent North to establish Fort Okanogan, where by studying the Indian languages during the long isolated winters, he soon became a proficient trader. He was both religious and scholarly, but either the intense loneliness of the life, or the danger of being among the Indians without a companion, drove him into marriage with a daughter of the Okanogans. This wife became one of the grand old ladies of the Red River Settlement, when Ross retired to Manitoba. Beaver must be sought as usual at the headwaters of the Missouri and the Yellowstone and the Big Horn; and to reach those headwaters for the spring hunt, Ross must do his buffalo hunting in mid-winter. The mountain passes must be traversed through bottomless depths of snow, for the climate was so mild no crust formed, and above the tree line in the cloud region was a fall--fall of snow almost continuous for the winter months till the precipices overhung with dangerous snow cornices of ponderous weight, and the cut-rocks were heaped into huge snow mushrooms. But Ross was no novice at snow work in the mountains. One of his first winters at Okanogan, he had become so desperately lonely that he decided to pay a three days’ visit to his next door neighbor at Spokane House, one hundred and fifty miles away. The country was rocky and the trail steep. Coming home the horses had fagged so completely climbing the last mountain that Ross and his Indian servants dismounted to beat the way up through the snow for the animals to follow. It was not easy work. Snow cornice broke under the