The leader, a lean giant, bearded to the cheek bones and with lank
locks of hair falling from a coon-skin cap, gave his introduction
briefly. They were a party of trappers en route from Fort Laramie to
St. Louis with the winter's catch of skins. In skirted, leather
hunting shirt and leggings, knife and pistols in the belt and powder
horn, bullet mold, screw and awl hanging from a strap across his chest,
he was the typical "mountain man." While he made his greetings, with
as easy an assurance as though he had dropped in upon a party of
friends, his companions picketed the animals which moved on the
outskirts of the light in a spectral band of drooping forms.
The three other men, were an ancient trapper with a white froth of hair
framing a face, brown and wrinkled as a nut, a Mexican, Indian-dark,
who crouched in his serape, rolled a cigarette and then fell asleep,
and a French Canadian voyageur in a coat made of blanketing and with a
scarlet handkerchief tied smooth over his head. He had a round ruddy
face, and when he smiled, which he did all the time, his teeth gleamed
square and white from the curly blackness of his beard.
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