There was an old saying among the Indians thai " Vbove the forks of the Platte, the grass does not burn." In the shadowy first years then- was very little grass in this country, and the little that did spring up in the early season, and much of the prairie was absolutely ban- by the middle of July. Thus it occurred that when General Ashley reached "the meadows," he rested for a few day. to let his horses recup

"A mountain of considerable proportions was nearly Opposite the camp," and one wild soul remarked that when he died he hoped that his body would be buried upon the top

minence as that. I have wondered if

the man who thus remarked was Hiram Scott, and if, five years later, it was the memory of this mountain that had inspired him onward to die at its feet.

Somewhere in the mountains Mr. Scott met Narcisse LeClerc. Francis LeClerc, who was with Stuart in 1812, was a kinsman of Narcisse, and had told him of the wonderful fur resources in the mountains, and the former was not long in finding his way into the wilds.

General Ashlev had returned to St. Louis

Death of Hiriam Scott

in the autumn of 1823, and Scott had become a free trapper, when he met LeClerc. (Ferris says that Scott was clerk of the American Fur Company, and that may have been true at one time, but not in 1828.)

The competition among the companies had driven the most enterprising men into the free trapper fraternity, and the exactions of free trappers drove the companies to consolidation. The Northwest had become a part of the Hudson Bay, and in July, 1827, the American Fur Company absorbed the Columbia. Free trappers would undoubtedly receive less for their peltries, and LeClerc and Scott determined to organize a new company.