CHAPTER XX.
_New plans_--_Our travellers join the fur-traders, and see many
strange things_--_A curious fight_--_A narrow escape, and a prisoner
taken_.
Not long after the events related in the last chapter, our four
friends--Dick, and Joe, and Henri, and Crusoe--agreed to become for a
time members of Walter Cameron's band of trappers. Joe joined because
one of the objects which the traders had in view was similar to his
own mission--namely, the promoting of peace among the various Indian
tribes of the mountains and plains to the west. Joe, therefore,
thought it a good opportunity of travelling with a band of men who
could secure him a favourable hearing from the Indian tribes they
might chance to meet with in the course of their wanderings. Besides,
as the traders carried about a large supply of goods with them, he
could easily replenish his own nearly exhausted pack by hunting wild
animals and exchanging their skins for such articles as he might
require.
Dick joined because it afforded him an opportunity of seeing the wild,
majestic scenery of the Rocky Mountains, and shooting the big-horned
sheep which abounded there, and the grizzly "bars," as Joe named them,
or "Caleb," as they were more frequently styled by Henri and the other
men.
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