Dressed in a neat
whipcord suit, wearing light shoes and a carefully tied tie, recently
shaved--a luxury we had denied ourselves, all this time--he was
certainly an interesting character to meet in this out-of-the-way
place. We should judge he was a little over forty years old; but
whether prospector, trapper, or explorer it was hard to say. Some
coyote skins, drying on a rock, would give one the impression that he
was the second, with a touch of the latter thrown in. These coyotes
were responsible for the tracks we had seen, and had mistaken for dog
tracks, but of all the canyons we had seen he was in the last place
where we would expect to find a trapper. The coyotes evidently reached
the river gorge through side canyons on the left, where we had seen
signs of ancient trails. Apart from that there was no sign of animal
life. With the last of the wooded canyons, the signs of beaver had
disappeared. There were a few otter tracks, but they are wily fellows,
and are seldom trapped. While there are laws against the trapping of
beaver, they seldom prevent the trappers from taking them when they
get the chance; they are only a little more wary of strangers; the
thought occurred to us that this trapper may have secured some beaver
in the open sections above, and mistrusted us for this reason.
It was too late to go any farther that evening, so we camped a hundred
yards below him, close to where our boats were pulled out.
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