But if the Rocky Mountain men could go unscathed among the Blackfeet, why, so could the American Fur Company! And Vanderburgh and Drips went! Rival traders might not commit murder. That led to the fearful ruin of the lawsuits that overtook Nor' Westers and Hudson's Bay in Canada only fifteen years before. But the mountaineers knew that the Blackfeet hated Henry Vanderburgh! Corduroyed muskeg where the mountaineers' long file of pack-horses had passed, fresh-chopped logs to make a way through blockades of fallen pine, the green moss that hangs festooned among the spruce at cloudline broken and swinging free as if a rider had passed that way, grazed bark where the pack-saddle had brushed a tree-trunk, muddy hoof-marks where the young packers had balked at fording an icy stream, scratchings on rotten logs where a mountaineer's pegged boot had stepped--all these told which way Fitzpatrick and Bridger had led their brigade. Oh, it was an easy matter to scent so hot a trail! Here the ashes of a camp-fire! There a pile of rock placed a deal too carefully for nature's work--the cached furs of the fleeing rivals! Besides, what with cañon and whirlpool, there are so very few ways by which a cavalcade can pass through mountains that the simplest novice could have trailed Fitzpatrick and Bridger. Doubtless between the middle of August when Vanderburgh and Drips set out on the chase and the middle of September when they ran down the fugitives the American Fur Company leaders had many a laugh at their own cleverness. They succeeded in overtaking the mountaineers in the valley of the Jefferson, splendid hunting-grounds with game enough for two lines of traps, which Vanderburgh and Drips at once set out. No swift flight by forced marches this time! The mountaineers sat still for almost a week. Then they casually moved down the Jefferson towards the main Missouri. The hunting-ground was still good. Weren't the mountaineers leaving a trifle too soon? Should the Americans follow or stay? Vanderburgh remained, moving over into the adjacent valley and spreading his traps along the Madison. Drips followed the mountaineers. Two weeks' chase over utterly gameless ground probably suggested to Drips that even an animal will lead off on a false scent to draw the enemy away from the true trail. At the Missouri he turned back up the Jefferson. Wheeling right about, the mountaineers at once turned back too, up the farthest valley, the Gallatin, then on the way to the first hunting-ground westward over a divide to the Madison, where--ill luck!--they again met their ubiquitous rival, Vanderburgh! How Vanderburgh laughed at these antics one may guess! Post-haste up the Madison went the mountaineers!