Leaving Pierre's Hole the mountaineers scattered to their rocky fastnesses, but no sooner had they pitched camp on good hunting-grounds than the strangers who had shadowed them at the _rendezvous_ came up. Breaking camp, the Rocky Mountain men would steal away by new and unknown passes to another valley. A day or two later, having followed by tent-poles dragging the ground, or brushwood broken by the passing packers, the pertinacious rivals would reappear. This went on persistently for three months. Infuriated by such tactics, the mountaineers planned to lead the spies a dance. Plunging into the territory of hostiles they gave their pursuers the slip. Neither party probably intended that matters should become serious; but that is always the fault of the white man when he plays the dangerous game of war with Indians. The spying party was ambushed, the leader slain, his flesh torn from his body and his skeleton thrown into the river. A few months later the Rocky Mountain traders paid for this escapade. Fitzpatrick, the same trapper who had "lifted" Ogden's furs and led this game against the spies, was robbed among Indians instigated by white men of the American Fur Company. This marked the beginning of the end with the Rocky Mountain trappers. The American Fur Company, which Mr. Astor had organized and stuck to through good repute and evil repute, was now officered by Ramsay Crooks and Farnham and Robert Stuart, who had remained loyal to Mr. Astor in Astoria and been schooled in a discipline that offered no quarter to enemies. The purchase of the Mackinaw Company gave the American Company all those posts between the Great Lakes and the height of land dividing the Mississippi and Missouri. When Congress excluded foreign traders in 1816, all the Nor' Westers' posts south of the boundary fell to the American Fur Company; and sturdy old Nor' Westers, who had been thrown out by the amalgamation with the Hudson's Bay, also added to the Americans' strength. Kenneth MacKenzie, with Laidlaw, Lament, and Kipp, had a line of posts from Green Bay to the Missouri held by an American to evade the law, but known as the Columbia Company. This organization[28] the American Fur Company bought out, placing MacKenzie at the mouth of the Yellowstone, where he built Fort Union and became the Pooh-Bah of the whole region, living in regal style like his ancestral Scottish chiefs. "King of the Missouri" white men called him, "big Indian me" the Blackfeet said; and "big Indian me" he was to them, for he was the first trader to win both their friendship and the Crows'. Here MacKenzie entertained Prince Maximilian of Wied and Catlin the artist and Audubon the naturalist, and had as his constant companion Hamilton, an English nobleman living in disguise and working for the fur company. Many an unmeant melodrama was enacted under the walls of Union in MacKenzie's reign.