He would be greeted as one risen from the dead; and with the greater welcome, as he returned flush of money.

A short time, however, spent in revelry, would be sufficient to drain his purse and sate him with civilized life, and he would return with new relish to the unshackled freedom of the forest.
Numbers of men of this class were scattered throughout the northwest territories.

Some of them retained a little of the thrift and forethought of the civilized man, and became wealthy among their improvident neighbors; their wealth being chiefly displayed in large bands of horses, which covered the prairies in the vicinity of their abodes.

Most of them, however, were prone to assimilate to the red man in their heedlessness of the future.
Such was Regis Brugiere, a freeman and rover of the wilderness.

Having been brought up in the service of the Northwest Company, he had followed in the train of one of its expeditions across the Rocky Mountains, and undertaken to trap for the trading post established on the Spokan River.
In the course of his hunting excursions he had either accidentally, or designedly, found his way to the post of Mr.Stuart, and had been prevailed upon to ascend the Columbia, and "try his luck" at Astoria.
Ignace Shonowane, the Iroquois hunter, was a specimen of a different class.