The old mountain man - tall, gaunt, furious, snow in his hair and beard, and murder in his eyes - burst into the big room of Pierre Boisdeffre's trading post just as the English party was sitting down to table - the table being only a long trestle of rough planks near the big fireplace, where a great haunch of elk dripped on its spit. Cook had just begun to slice off generous cuts when out of the winter night the wild man stormed. Tom Fitzpatrick, called the Broken Hand, had just been filling a pipe. Before he could fully turn, the tall intruder dealt him a blow that sent him spinning into a barrel of traps - man and barrel fell over with a loud clatter.
- From The Wandering Hill by Larry McMurtry
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