i)
7)

CHRONICLES OF THE CARIBOO

Did that big astute Indian foresee and ae aban | plan that timely
help to his plans?

The reader may aveil wonder, also, and the writer, who knew Bap-
tiste well in later years, is still wondering. Remember he had marked
with silent disapproval the covetous eyes of the whitemen dwelling ar-
dently upon his beautiful young cousins.

In the morning it transpired that Tomaah had decided not to go
with the miners, saying he expected a message any day directing him
to go out on another dispatch trip, but Dunlevey suspected that the
beauteous young Taghleil girl was his chief attraction and he said he
couldn’t blame him in the least.

So it was Baptiste who took over alone the task of guiding the
miners’ party. An efficient guide he proved, too. A bit taciturn for
the most part, but always good humoredly so. He must have known
the country well, or so the whitemen thought, for he never seemed to
hesitate about his direction, and there was no sign of a trail to follow,
except game trails and they almost always crossed their line of travel,
which was almost directly North. He seemed to use uncanny judg-
ment about choosing camp sites nearly always at a meadow where the
water and horse feed were good and the animals could feed in the
open and be easily kept track of. Though how he knew where to find
those meadows, in that pine forest, whose chief characteristic was its
eternal sameness, was a mystery to the whitemen.

Baptiste had three cayuses with saddleis of his own which he turn-
ed in to the services of the miners and that lightened the loads of
some.of the other horses. But even so, having to cut their way
through many thickets and some stretches of wind-falls they never
made more than ten or twelve miles a day. But at that the miners
thought it better going than they expected to make through unknown
wocds. He proved an expert hunter, too, and kept the party supplied
with fresh venison that fell to his mighty war bow, and fresh fish

ught in the lakes with his net, which he had to swim out to set.
He aiso chose the smaller doe deer as they could be ail used before the
meat spoiled in the hot, fly infested weather. Neither would he kill
a bear, explaining that neither the meat nor the hide were any good
at that time.of the year.

When Dunlevey asked him why he didn’t kill a buck he explained:

“Buck he seek inside dis moon. Not seek, jus’ look seek. White-
man see, not lak’, no eat.”

Nearly always when hunting, and at other times as well, he wore
only his moccasins and a breach clout, and the miners wondered why
the myriads of big hungry mosquitoes didn’t seem to bother him, ’till
they saw him anointing his skin with some sort of preparation, which
he explained was made of a sort of fungus growth, found on old ced-
ar trees, mixed with other oils and animal secretions - even a smal!
quantity of skunk secretion. The odor of the combined concoction
was very powerful but not at all unpleasant to humans. Baptiste
claimed it killed the man smell, so he could hunt and track down wind