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[Illustration: THE SHALE BEGAN SLIDING UNDER MY FEET (PAGE 51)]
=London= CONSTABLE & CO. LIMITED BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY JAMES WILLARD SCHULTZ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO MY WIFE
WHOSE GOOD COMRADESHIP AND SYMPATHY HAVE BEEN MY GREATEST HELP IN WRITING THE TALE
When in the seventies I turned my back on civilization and joined the trappers and traders of the Northwest, Thomas Fox became my friend. We were together in the Indian camps and trading posts often for months at a time; he loved to recount his adventures in still earlier days, and thus it was that I learned the facts of his life. The stories that he told by the evening camp-fire and before the comfortable fireplaces of our various posts, on long winter days, were impressed upon my memory, but to make sure of them I frequently took notes of the more important points.
As time passed, I realized more and more how unusual and interesting his adventures were, and I urged him to write an account of them. He began with enthusiasm, but soon tired of the unaccustomed work. Later, however, after the buffalo had been exterminated and we were settled on a cattle-ranch, where the life was of a deadly monotony compared with that which we had led, I induced him to take up the narrative once more. Some parts of it he wrote with infinite detail; other parts consisted only of dates and a few sentences.
He was destined never to finish the task. An old bullet wound in his lung had always kept him in poor health, and when, in the winter of 1885, he contracted pneumonia, the end was quick. His last request was that I would put his notes in shape for publication. This I have done to the best of my ability in my own old age; how well I have done it is for the reader to judge.