← catalogue

In the Old West

by George Frederick Augustus Ruxton · English · Gutenberg #46328 · 482,848 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of In the Old West
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: In the Old West

Author: George Frederick Augustus Ruxton

Editor: Horace Kephart


        
Release date: July 19, 2014 [eBook #46328]
                Most recently updated: June 5, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46328

Credits: Produced by David Widger from page images generously
        provided by the Internet Archive


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE OLD WEST ***

IN THE OLD WEST

By George Frederick Ruxton

As it was in the Days of Kit Carson and The "Mountain Men"

Edited by Horace Kephart

Copyright 1915, Outing Publishing Company




INTRODUCTION

|When we bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, in 1803, it was
not from any pressing need of land, for we still had millions of fertile
acres east of the Mississippi. The purchase was made to forestall
complications with foreign powers, either with the arch-conqueror
himself, whose ambition was supposed to be the mastery of the whole
world, or with Great Britain, to which the western country was sure
to fall in case France should be defeated. Possession of Louisiana was
essential to our free navigation of the Mississippi.

The vast domain thus added to our boundaries was _terra incognita_.
Aside from, its strategic importance no one knew what it was good for.
So Lewis and Clark were sent out from the frontier post of St. Louis to
find a route to the Pacific and to report on what the new country was
like.

The only commercial asset that these explorers found which was
immediately available was an abundance of fur-bearing animals. Fur may
be called the gold of that period, and the news that there was plenty of
it in the Rocky Mountains lured many an intrepid spirit of the border.
Companies of traders proceeded at once up the Missouri to barter for
peltries with the Indians.

They established posts and arranged rendezvous in remote fastnesses
of the mountains where they carried on a perilous but very profitable
traffic. At the same time there went into the Far West many independent
adventurers to hunt and trap on their own account.

In the motley ranks of these soldiers of fortune the boldest and most
romantic characters were the free trappers--those who went, as they
expressed it; "on their own hook." The employees of the fur companies
were under strict discipline that checked personal initiative. They were
of the class who work for hire and see no compensation for an arduous
life save the wages earned from their taskmasters. But the free trappers
were accountable to nobody. Each of them fought his own fight and won
the full fruit of his endeavors. Going alone, or in small bands who
acknowledged no captain and would split up whenever the humor moved
them, everyone a law unto himself and relying upon his own strong arm,
they were men picked by nature for great enterprises and great deeds.

It was not love of gain for its own sake that drew the free trappers
into the wilderness. To them a pack of beaver skins was a mere gambler's
stake, to be squandered riotously after the fashion of Jack ashore. What
did compel them to a life of endless wandering and extreme hazard
was the sheer lust of adventure, and a passion for that absolute,
irresponsible freedom that can be enjoyed only in a state of nature.
Never in our history have there been pioneers who took greater risks
than they, or endured harsher vicissitudes, or severed themselves so
completely from the civilization in which they were born. Nowhere, and
at no time, have men of our race been thrown more upon their individual
resources in unknown regions, and through periods of great peril, nor
have there ever been characters more fitly developed to stand such
strain.

Cut off from the repressing and refining influences of civilization,
forever warring with this Indian tribe and cohabiting with that, it was
inevitable that most of these men should revert toward the status of
white barbarians. And yet it would be a grave error, an injustice, to
rate them with mere renegades and desperadoes. The trapper, whatever his
faults, was still every inch a man. Bravest of the brave, yet cool
and sagacious in the strategy of border war, capable in any emergency,
faithful to his own code of honor, generous without limit to everyone
but his foes, loyal to the death, frankly contemptuous of luxury and
caste and affectation, imperial in his self-respect but granting equal
rights to others, there was something heroic in this fierce and uncouth
figure who dominated for a time the vast plains and mountains of the
wild West. And it should not be forgotten that the early traders and
trappers performed an indispensable service to their country that no
other men of their time were able, or at least willing, to do: they were
the explorers, the trail-makers, for western civilization.

General Chittenden, our first authority on the history of the fur trade,
says of the mountain men: "It was the roving trader and the solitary
trapper who first sought out these inhospitable wilds, traced the
streams to their sources, scaled the mountain passes, and explored a
boundless expanse of territory where the foot of the white man had never
trodden before. The Far West became a field of romantic adventure, and
developed a class of men who loved the wandering career of the native
inhabitant rather than the toilsome lot of the industrious colonist.
The type of life thus developed, though essentially evanescent, and
not representing any profound national movement, was a distinct
and necessary phase in the growth of this new country. Abounding in
incidents picturesque and heroic, its annals inspire an interest akin to
that which belongs to the age of knight-errantry. For the free hunter
of the Far West was, in his rough way, a good deal of a knight-errant.
Caparisoned in the wild attire of the Indian, and armed _cap-a-pie_
for instant combat, he roamed far and wide over deserts and mountains,
gathering the scattered wealth of those regions, slaying ferocious
beasts and savage men, and leading a life in which every footstep
was beset with enemies and every moment pregnant of peril. The great
proportion of these intrepid spirits who laid down their lives in that
far country is impressive proof of the jeopardy of their existence. All
in all, the period of this adventurous business may justly be considered
the romantic era of the history of the West....

"It was the trader and trapper who first explored and established the
routes of travel which are now, and always will be, the avenues of
commerce in that region. _They_ were the 'pathfinders' of the West,
and not those later official explorers whom posterity so recognizes.
No feature of western geography was ever _discovered_ by Government
explorers after 1840. Everything was already known, and had been for
fully a decade. It is true that many features, like the Yellowstone
wonderland, with which these restless rovers were familiar, were
afterward forgotten and were re-discovered in later years; but there has
never been a time until very recently when the geography of the West was
so thoroughly understood as it was by the trader and trapper from 1830
to 1840.

"This minute knowledge was of practical use in many ways. When Brigham
Young selected the valley of Great Salt Lake as the future home of his
people, he did so largely upon information derived from the traders.
When the War with Mexico came, the military forces of the United
States invaded New Mexico under the guidance of men who knew every trail
and mountain pass better than the most thorough reconnaissance could
have taught them. When the national troops appeared before the gates of
Santa Fé they were met by a people who had already been virtually won to
the American cause through long intercourse with the traders. When the
rush of emigration to California and Oregon followed, the emigrants
found a highway across the continent already established. When the
Government entered in earnest upon the work of exploration, it was the
veteran mountaineer who was always sought to do service as guide."

It is most unfortunate that there exists in American literature no
intimate and vivid account of the western hunters and trappers by one
who had shared their camps and accompanied them on trail and warpath.
We have many stories of their exploits, written in narrative form, with
scarce any dialogue or characterization. The men themselves figure in
such stories as little more than lay figures in a historical museum. It
is one thing to describe events; it is another thing to make the actors
in those events live and speak in the reader's presence. Generally the
contemporary annals of the fur trade are as dry as a ship's log-book.
The participants in those stirring scenes could not write, and the men
of their time who could write lacked the experience.

What American authors failed to do was accomplished by a young English
sportsman and explorer who lived among the trappers as one of themselves
and acquired their point of view. Although not a professional writer,
he was blest with a knack of putting his experiences, and those of his
companions, so clearly before his readers that one can visualize both
men and deeds without conscious effort. This man was George Frederick
Ruxton, formerly a lieutenant in her Majesty's 89th Regiment.

In _Blackwood's Magazine_ of 1848 there appeared a serial by Ruxton
entitled "Life in the Far West." This story excited so much interest
that it was reprinted in book form, and went through two editions. These
are out of print, and so the work is practically unknown to our reading
public.

"Life in the Far West" * is written in the form of a thinly veiled
romance; but the actors were real, the incidents were real, and they
were strung together in a connected plot simply because that was
the most effective way to show character in action. The story is not
history, of course, but neither is it fable. Nearly every page gives
convincing evidence of the author's intimate personal knowledge of
the scenes and characters portrayed. He had scoured the continent from
Canada to Mexico, from the Mississippi to the Pacific coast. He had
associated with many redoubtable characters of the old West--with men
like Kit Carson, Bill Williams, the Bents, the Sublettes, Joe Meek, St.
Vrain, Fitzpatrick, Killbuck, and La Bonté. He was equally at home
among Americans, Canadians, Creoles, Mexicans, Spanish Californians, and
Indians. Each of these picturesque types he has shown to the life. No
narrative or formal history of that time has described the pioneers of
the Far West with such actual truth and fidelity.

     * Here published as "In the Old West."

The wildness of the adventures related by Ruxton led many readers to
suspect that they were mere romance. The author replied, in a letter to
his publishers:--

"I think it would be well to correct a misapprehension as to the truth
or fiction of the paper. It is _no fiction_. There is no incident in it
which has not actually occurred, nor one character who is not well
known in the Rocky Mountains, with the exception of two whose names are
changed." Fully half of the names of Americans mentioned in his book can
be identified today with the men who bore them. Again he wrote:--

"I have brought out a few more softening traits in the characters of the
mountaineers--but not at the sacrifice of truth--for some of them have
their good points; which, as they are rarely allowed to rise to
the surface, must be laid hold of at once before they sink again.
Killbuck--that 'old hoss' _par exemple_, was really pretty much of a
gentleman, as was La Bonté. Bill Williams, another 'hard case,' and Rube
Herring, were 'some' too.

"The scene where La Bonté joins the Chase family is so far true, that he
did make a sudden appearance; but, in reality, a day before the Indian
attack. The Chases (and I wish I had not given the proper name *) did
start for the Platte alone, and were stampeded upon the waters of the
Platte.

"The Mexican fandango _is true to the letter_. It does seem difficult to
understand how they contrived to keep their knives out of the hump-ribs
of the mountaineers; but how can you account for the fact, that, the
other day, 4000 Mexicans, with 13 pieces of artillery, behind strong
intrenchments and two lines of parapets, were routed by 900 raw
Missourians; 300 killed, as many more wounded, all their artillery
captured, as well as several hundred prisoners; and that not one
American was killed in the affair? _This is positive fact_.

"I myself, with three trappers, cleared a fandango at Taos, armed only
with bowie-knives--some score Mexicans, at least, being in the room.

     * In accordance with this suggestion, the name was changed
     to Brand. The mountaineers, it seems, are more sensitive to
     type than to tomahawks; and poor Ruxton, who always
     contemplated another expedition among them, would sometimes
     jestingly speculate upon his reception, should they learn
     that he had shown them up in print.

"With regard to the incidents of Indian attacks, starvation,
cannibalism, &c., I have invented not one out of my own head. They are
all matters of history in the mountains; but I have no doubt jumbled
the _dramatis persono_ one with another, and may have committed
anachronisms." Scholars may detect some inaccuracies here and there,
such as scarcely could be avoided by one who wrote, as we may say, in
the saddle; but these detract nothing from the essential verity of the
book. Ruxton's purpose was not to write a chronicle, but to exhibit
vividly the mountain men and the natives in relation to their
environment. If he wrought disconnected incidents into a continuous
story, and staged men together who may have been a thousand miles apart
at the time, it was only because, to this extent, "fiction is the most
convincing way of telling the truth."

As the author of this book was himself a true knight of the wilderness
whose brief life was filled with thrilling adventures, we append the
following memoir by one of his friends:--

"The London newspapers of October, 1848, contained the mournful tidings
of the death, at St. Louis on the Mississippi, and at the early age of
twenty-eight, of Lieutenant George Frederick Ruxton, formerly of her
Majesty's 89th Regiment, the author of the following sketches:

"Many men, even in the most enterprising periods of our history, have
been made the subjects of elaborate biography with far less title to
the honor than this lamented young officer. Time was not granted him
to embody in a permanent shape a tithe of his personal experiences and
strange adventures in three quarters of the globe. Considering, indeed,
the amount of physical labor he underwent, and the extent of the fields
over which his wanderings spread, it is almost surprising he found
leisure to write so much.

"At the early age of seventeen, Mr. Ruxton quitted Sandhurst, to learn
the practical part of a soldier's profession in the civil wars of Spain.
He obtained a commission in a squadron of lancers then attached to the
division of General Diego Leon, and was actively engaged in several of
the most important combats of the campaign. For his marked gallantry
on these occasions he received from Queen Isabella II. the cross of the
first class of the Order of St. Fernando, an honor which has seldom been
awarded to one so young.

"On his return from Spain he found himself gazetted to a commission in
the 89th Regiment; and it was whilst serving with that distinguished
corps in Canada that he first became acquainted with the stirring scenes
of Indian life, which he has since so graphically portrayed. His eager
and enthusiastic spirit soon became wearied with the monotony of
the barrack-room; and, yielding to that impulse which in him was
irresistibly developed, he resigned his commission, and directed his
steps towards the stupendous wilds tenanted only by the Red Indian, or
by the solitary American trapper.

"Those familiar with Mr. Ruxton's writings cannot fail to have remarked
the singular delight with which he dwells upon the recollections of this
portion of his career, and the longing which he carried with him, to the
hour of his death, for a return to those scenes of primitive freedom.
'Although liable to an accusation of barbarism,' he writes, 'I must
confess that the very happiest moments of my life have been spent in
the wilderness of the Far West; and I never recall but with pleasure the
remembrance of my solitary camp in the Bayou Salade, with no friend near
me more faithful than my rifle, and no companions more sociable than my
good horse and mules, or the attendant cayute which nightly serenaded
us. With a plentiful supply of dry pine-logs on the fire, and its
cheerful blaze streaming far up into the sky, illuminating the valley
far and near, and exhibiting the animals, with well-filled bellies,
standing contentedly at rest over their picket-fire, I would sit
cross-legged, enjoying the genial warmth, and, pipe in mouth, watch the
blue smoke as it curled upwards, building castles in its vapory wreaths,
and, in the fantastic shapes it assumed, peopling the solitude with
figures of those far away. Scarcely, however, did I ever wish to change
such hours of freedom for all the luxuries of civilized life;
and unnatural and extraordinary as it may appear, yet such is the
fascination of the life of the mountain hunter, that I believe not one
instance could be adduced of even the most polished and civilized
of men, who had once tasted the sweets of its attendant liberty, and
freedom from every worldly care, not regretting the moment when he
exchanged it for the monotonous life of the settlements, nor sighing and
sighing again once more to partake of its pleasures and allurements.'

"On his return to Europe from the Far West, Mr. Ruxton, animated with a
spirit as enterprising and fearless as that of Raleigh, planned a scheme
for the exploration of Central Africa, which was thus characterized
by the President of the Royal Geographical Society, in his anniversary
address for 1845: 'To my great surprise, I recently conversed with
an ardent and accomplished youth, Lieutenant Ruxton, late of the 89th
Regiment, who had formed the daring project of traversing Africa in
the parallel of the southern tropic, and has actually started for this
purpose. Preparing himself by previous excursions on foot in North
Africa and Algeria, he sailed from Liverpool early in December last, in
the _Royalist_, for Ichaboe. From that spot he was to repair to Walvish
Bay, where we have already mercantile establishments. The intrepid
traveler had received from the agents of these establishments such
favorable accounts of the nations towards the interior, as also of the
nature of the climate, that he has the most sanguine hopes of being
able to penetrate to the central region, if not of traversing it to the
Portuguese colonies of Mozambique. If this be accomplished, then indeed
will Lieutenant Ruxton have acquired for himself a permanent name among
British travelers, by making us acquainted with the nature of the axis
of the great continent of which we possess the southern extremity.'

"In pursuance of this hazardous scheme, Ruxton, with a single companion,
landed on the coast, of Africa, a little to the south of Ichaboe, and
commenced his journey of exploration. But it seemed as if both nature
and man had combined to baffle the execution of his design. The course
of their travel lay along a desert of moving sand, where no water was
to be found, and little herbage, save a coarse tufted grass and twigs of
the resinous myrrh. The immediate place of their destination was Angra
Peguena, on the coast, described as a frequented station, but which in
reality was deserted. One ship only was in the offing when the travelers
arrived, and to their inexpressible mortification they discovered that
she was outward bound. No trace was visible of the river or streams laid
down in the maps as falling into the sea at this point, and no resource
was left to the travelers save that of retracing their steps--a labor
for which their strength was hardly adequate. But for the opportune
assistance of a body of natives, who encountered them at the very moment
when they were sinking from fatigue and thirst, Ruxton and his companion
would have been added to the long catalogue of those whose lives have
been sacrificed in the attempt to explore the interior of that fatal
country.

"The jealousy of the traders, and of the missionaries settled on the
African coast, who constantly withheld or perverted that information
which was absolutely necessary for the successful prosecution of the
journey, induced Ruxton to abandon the attempt for the present. He made,
however, several interesting excursions towards the interior, and more
especially in the country of the Bosjesmans.

"Finding his own resources inadequate for the accomplishment of his
favorite project, Mr. Ruxton, on his return to England, made application
for Government assistance. But though this demand was not altogether
refused, it having been referred to the Council of the Royal
Geographical Society, and favorably reported upon by that body, so many
delays interposed that Ruxton, in disgust, resolved to withdraw from
the scheme, and to abandon the field of African research which he had
already contemplated from its borders.

"He next bent his steps to Mexico; and, fortunately, has presented
to the world his reminiscences of that country, in one of the most
fascinating volumes which of late years has issued from the press.

"It would however appear that the African scheme, the darling project of
his life, had again recurred to him at a later period; for in the course
of the present spring, before setting out on that journey which was
destined to be his last, the following expressions occur in one of his
letters:--"'My movements are uncertain, for I am trying to get up a
yacht voyage to Borneo and the Indian Archipelago; have volunteered
to Government to explore Central Africa; and the Aborigenes Protection
Society wish me to go out to Canada to organize the Indian tribes;
whilst, for my own part and inclination, I wish to go to all parts of
the world at once.'

"His last letter, written just before his departure from England, a few
weeks previous to his death, will hardly be read by anyone who ever
knew the writer without a tear of sympathy for the sad fate of this
fine young man, dying miserably in a strange land, before he had well
commenced the hazardous journey whose excitement and dangers he so
joyously anticipated:--

"'As you say, human nature can't go on feeding on civilized fixings in
this big village; and this child has felt like going west for many a
month, being "half froze for buffler-meat and mountain doin's." My route
takes me _via_ New York, the Lakes, and St. Louis, to Fort Leavenworth
or Independence, on the Indian frontier. Thence, packing my "possibles"
on a mule, and mounting a buffalo horse (Panchito, if he is alive),
I strike the Santa Fé trail to the Arkansa, away up that river to the
mountains, winter in the Bayou Salade, where Killbuck and La Bonté
joined the Yutes, cross the mountains next spring to Great Salt
Lake--and that's far enough to look forward to--always supposing my hair
is not lifted by Comanche or Pawnee on the scalping route of the Coon
Creeks and Pawnee Fork.'

"Poor fellow! he spoke lightly, in the buoyancy of youth and a confident
spirit, of the fate he little thought to meet, but which too surely
overtook him--not indeed by Indian blade, but by the no less deadly
stroke of disease. Another motive, besides that love of rambling
and adventure which, once conceived and indulged, is so difficult to
eradicate, impelled him across the Atlantic. He had for some time
been out of health at intervals, and he thought the air of his beloved
prairies would be efficacious to work a cure. In a letter to a friend,
in the month of May last, he thus referred to the probable origin of the
evil:--

"'I have been confined to my room for many days, from the effects of an
accident I met with in the Rocky Mountains, having been spilt from the
bare back of a mule, and falling on the sharp picket of an Indian lodge
on the small of my back. I fear I injured my spine, for I have never
felt altogether the thing since, and, shortly after I saw you, the
symptoms became rather ugly. However, I am now getting round again.'

"His medical advisers shared his opinion that he had sustained internal
injury from this ugly fall; and it is not improbable that it was the
remote, but real cause of his dissolution. From whatsoever this ensued,
it will be a source of deep and lasting regret to all who ever enjoyed
opportunities of appreciating the high and sterling qualities of George
Frederick Ruxton. Few men, so prepossessing on first acquaintance,
gained so much by being better known. With great natural abilities
and the most dauntless bravery, he united a modesty and gentleness
peculiarly pleasing.

"Had he lived, and resisted his friends' repeated solicitations to
abandon a roving life and settle down in England, there can be little
doubt that he would have made his name eminent on the lists of those
daring and persevering men, whose travels in distant and dangerous lands
have accumulated for England, and for the world, so rich a store of
scientific and general information. And although the few words it has
been thought right and becoming here to devote to his memory, will
doubtless be more particularly welcome to his personal friends, we are
persuaded that none will peruse without interest this brief tribute to
the merits of a gallant soldier and accomplished English gentleman."

In the present edition no liberties have been taken with the text except
by correcting a few obvious errors, and making the spelling conform to
American usage. Footnotes by the present editor are marked (Ed); those
unsigned are by Ruxton himself.

One useful purpose that this book may serve is to give professional
hunters and trappers their due as hard working men. From time immemorial
it has been the fashion to look down upon their ilk as lazy vagabonds
"too trifling to work for a living." Such is the almost universal
opinion of people who never have taken a big game hunt themselves, never
even have seen hunters at work in the wilderness, but know them only as
they take their well-earned ease after an exhausting chase.

"The lazy hunter" is the most misjudged of men; for really there is
no harder labor than the pursuit of wild animals for a livelihood. The
libelous epithet perhaps came in vogue from the fact that hunting and
trapping are apt to unfit a man for _settled_ habits of industry. Or it
may have come from observing the whole-souled enjoyment with which the
hunter pursues his occupation. We have not yet got rid of the Puritan
notion that no effort is worthy unless it is painful to the spirit.
The freeman of the woods calls his labor sport, and he laughs, in
retrospect, at all the cruel toil, the starving and freezing and broken
bones. Being utterly independent he seldom does things that "go against
the grain," save as he is driven by necessity. But how sharp was the
lash of that necessity, how often it stung body and soul, how many a
hunter "went under," even in the old days when game was in the greatest
abundance, is shown with perfect fidelity to truth in this picture of
"Life in the Far West."

Horace Kephart.





IN THE OLD WEST




CHAPTER I

|AWAY to the head-waters of the Platte, where several small streams run
into the south fork of that river, and head in the broken ridges of the
"Divide" which separates the valleys of the Platte and the Arkansa, were
camped a band of trappers on a creek called Bijou. It was the month of
October, when the early frosts of the coming winter had crisped and dyed
with sober brown the leaves of the cherry and quaking ash belting the
brooks; and the ridges and peaks of the Rocky Mountains were already
covered with a glittering mantle of snow, sparkling in the still
powerful rays of the autumn sun.

The camp had all the appearance of permanency; for not only did it
comprise one or two unusually comfortable shanties, but the numerous
stages on which huge strips of buffalo-meat were hanging in process of
cure, showed that the party had settled themselves here in order to lay
in a store of provisions, or, as it is termed in the language of the
mountains, "to make meat." Round the camp fed twelve or fifteen mules
and horses, their fore-legs confined by hobbles of rawhide; and,
guarding these animals, two men paced backwards and forwards, driving
in the stragglers, ascending ever and anon the bluffs which overhung the
river, and leaning on their long rifles, whilst they swept with
their eyes the surrounding prairie. Three or four fires burned in
the encampment, at some of which Indian women carefully tended sundry
steaming pots; whilst round one, which was in the center of it, four
or five stalwart hunters, clad in buckskin, sat cross-legged, pipe in
mouth.

They were a trapping party from the north fork of Platte, on their way
to wintering-ground in the more southern valley of the Arkansa; some,
indeed, meditating a more extended trip, even to the distant settlements
of New Mexico, the paradise of mountaineers. The elder of the company
was a tall gaunt man, with a face browned by twenty years' exposure
to the extreme climate of the mountains; his long black hair, as yet
scarcely tinged with gray, hanging almost to his shoulders, but his
cheeks and chin clean shaven, after the fashion of the mountain-men. His
dress was the usual hunting-frock of buckskin, with long fringes down
the seams, with pantaloons similarly ornamented, and moccasins of Indian
make. Whilst his companions puffed their pipes in silence, he narrated
a few of his former experiences of western life; and whilst the buffalo
hump-ribs and tenderloin are singing away in the pot, preparing for the
hunters' supper, we will note down the yarn as it spins from his lips,
giving it in the language spoken in the "Far West":--

"'Twas about calf-time, maybe a little later, and not a hundred year ago
by a long chalk, that the biggest kind of rendezvous was held 'to' to
Independence, a mighty handsome little location away up on old Missoura.
A pretty smart lot of boys was camped thar, about a quarter from the
town, and the way the whisky flowed that time was some now, _I_ can tell
you. Thar was old Sam Owins--him as got rubbed out * by the Spaniards
at Sacramenty, or Chihuahuy, this hoss doesn't know which, but he went
under ** anyhow. Well, Sam had his train along, ready to hitch up for
the Mexican country--twenty thunderin' big Pittsburgh wagons; and the
way his Santa Fé boys took in the liquor beat all--eh, Bill?"

     * Killed,  adapted from the Indian figurative language

     ** Died.

"_Well_, it did."

"Bill Bent--his boys camped the other side the trail, and they was all
mountain-men, wagh!--and Bill Williams, and Bill Tharpe (the Pawnees
took his hair on Pawnee Fork last spring): three Bills, and them three's
all gone under. Surely Hatcher went out that time; and, adapted from the
Indian figurative language, wasn't Bill Garey along, too? Didn't him and
Chabonard sit in camp for twenty hours at a deck of euker? Them was
Bent's Indian traders up on Arkansa. Poor Bill Bent! them Spaniards made
meat of him. He lost his topknot to Taos. A clever man was Bill Bent as
I ever know'd trade a robe or throw a bufler in his tracks. Old St.
Vrain could knock the hind-sight off him though, when it came to
shootin', and old Silverheels spoke true, she did: 'plumcenter' she was,
eh?"

"Well, she wasn't nothin' else."

"The Greasers * paid for Bent's scalp, they tell me. Old St. Vrain went
out of Santa Fé with a company of mountain-men, and the way they made'em
sing out was slick as shootin'. He 'counted a coup,' did St. Vrain. He
throwed a Pueblo as had on poor Bent's shirt. I guess he tickled that
nigger's hump-ribs. Fort William ** ain't the lodge it was, an' never
will be agin, now he's gone under; but St. Vrain's 'pretty much of a
gentleman,' too; if he ain't, I'll be dog-gone--eh, Bill?"

     * The Mexicans are called "Spaniards" or "Greasers" (from
     their greasy appearance) by the Western people.

     ** Bent's Indian trading fort on the Arkansa.

"He is so-o."

"Chavez had his wagons along. He was only a Spaniard anyhow, and some of
his teamsters put a ball into him his next trip, and made a raise of his
dollars, wagh! Uncle Sam hung'em for it, I heard, but can't b'lieve it,
nohow. If them Spaniards wasn't born for shootin', why was beaver made?
You was with us that spree, Jemmy?"

"No _sirre-e_; I went out when Spiers lost his animals on Cimmaron: a
hundred and forty mules and oxen was froze that night, wagh!"

"Surely Black Harris was thar; and the darndest liar was Black
Harris--for lies tumbled out of his mouth like boudins out of a buffer's
stomach. He was the child as saw the putrefied forest in the Black
Hills. Black Harris come in from Laramie; he'd been trapping three year
an' more on Platte and the other side; and, when he got into Liberty, he
fixed himself right off like a Saint Louiy dandy. Well, he sat to dinner
one day in the tavern, and a lady says to him--

"'Well, Mister Harris, I hear you're a great trav'ler.'

"'Trav'ler, marm,' says Black Harris, 'this nigger's no trav'ler; I ar'
a trapper, marm, a mountain-man, wagh!'

"'Well, Mister Harris, trappers are great trav'lers, and you goes over a
sight of ground in your perishinations, I'll be bound to say.'

"'A sight, marm, this coon's gone over, if that's the way your stick
floats. * I've trapped beaver on Platte and Arkansa, and away up on
Missoura and Yaller Stone; I've trapped on Columbia, on Lewis Fork, and
Green River; I've trapped, marm, on Grand River and the Heely (Gila).
I've fout the Blackfoot (and d------d bad Injuns they are); I've raised
the hair * of more than one Apach, and made a Rapaho 'come' afore now;
I've trapped in heav'n, in airth, and h----; and scalp my old head,
marm, but I've seen a putrefied forest.'

     * Meaning--if that's what you mean. The "stick" is tied to
     the beaver-trap by a string, and, floating on the water,
     points out its position, should a beaver have carried it
     away.

"'La, Mister Harris, a what?'

"'A putrefied forest, marm, as sure as my rifle's got hind-sights, and
_she_ shoots center. I was out on the Black Hills, Bill Sublette knows
the time--the year it rained fire--and everybody knows when that was. If
thar wasn't cold doins about that time, this child wouldn't say so. The
snow was about fifty foot deep, and the bufler lay dead on the ground
like bees after a beein'; not whar we was tho', for thar was no bufler,
and no meat, and me and my band had been livin' on our moccasins
(leastwise the parflesh **) for six weeks; and poor doins that feedin'
is, marm, as you'll never know. One day we crossed a canyon and over a
divide, and got into a peraira, whar was green grass, and green trees,
and green leaves on the trees, and birds singing in the green leaves,
and this in Febrary, wagh! Our animals was like to die when they see the
green grass, and we all sung out, "Hurraw for summer doins."

     * Scalped.

     ** Soles made of buffalo hide.

"'"Hyar goes for meat," says I, and I jest ups old Ginger at one of
them singing-birds, and down come the crittur elegant; its darned head
spinning away from the body, but never stops singing; and when I takes
up the meat, I finds it stone, wagh! "Hyar's damp powder and no fire to
dry it," I says, quite skeared.

"'"Fire be dogged," says old Rube. "Hyar's a hoss, as'll make fire
come," and with that he takes his axe and lets drive at a cotton wood.
Schr-u-k--goes the axe agin the tree, and out comes a bit of the blade
as big as my hand. We looks at the animals, and thar they stood shaking
over the grass, which I'm dog-gone if it wasn't stone, too. Young
Sublette comes up, and he'd been clerking down to the fort on Platte, so
he know'd something. He looks and looks, and scrapes the trees with
his butcher knife, and snaps the grass like pipe-stems, and breaks the
leaves a-snappin' like Californy shells.

"'"What's all this, boy?" I asks.

"'"Putrefactions," says he, looking smart; "putrefactions, or I'm a
nigger."'

"'La, Mister Harris,' says the lady, 'putrefactions! why, did the leaves
and the trees and the grass smell badly?'

"'Smell badly, marm!' says Black Harris; 'would a skunk stink if he was
froze to stone? No, marm, this child didn't know what putrefaction was,
and young Sublette's varsion wouldn't shine nohow, so I chips a piece
out of a tree and puts it in my trap-sack, and carries it in safe to
Laramie. Well, old Captain Stewart (a clever man was that, though he was
an Englishman), he comes along next spring, and a Dutch doctor chap
was along too. I shows him the piece I chipped out of the tree, and he
called it a putrefaction too; and so, marm, if that wasn't a putrefied
peraira, what was it? For this hoss doesn't know, and he knows fat cow
from poor bull, anyhow.'

"Well, old Black Harris is gone under too, I believe. He went to the
Parks trapping with a Vide Poche Frenchman, who shot him for his bacca
and traps. Darn them Frenchmen, they're no account any way you lays your
sight. (Any bacca in your bag, Bill? this beaver feels like chawing.)

"Well, anyhow, thar was the camp, and they was goin' to put out the
next morning; and the last as come out of Independence was that ar
Englishman. He'd a nor-west * capote on, and a two-shoot gun rifled.
Well, them English are darned fools; they can't fix a rifle any ways;
but that one did shoot some; leastwise he made it throw plum-center. He
made the bufler come, he did, and fout well at Pawnee Fork too. What was
his name? All the boys called him Cap'en, and he got his fixings from
old Choteau; but what he wanted out thar in the mountains, I never jest
rightly know'd. He was no trader, nor a trapper, and flung about his
dollars right smart. Thar was old grit in him, too, and a hair of the
black b'ar at that. ** They say he took the bark off the Shians when
he cleared out of the village with old Beavertail's squaw. He'd been on
Yaller Stone afore that: Leclerc know'd him in the Blackfoot, and up
in the Chippeway country; and he had the best powder as ever I flashed
through life, and his gun was handsome, that's a fact. Them thar locks
was grand; and old Jake Hawken's nephey (him as trapped on Heeley that
time) told me, the other day, as he saw an English gun on Arkansa last
winter as beat all off hand.

     * The Hudson's Bay Company, having amalgamated with the
     American North-West Company, is known by the name "North-
     West" to the southern trappers. Their employés usually wear
     Canadian capotes.

     ** A spice of the devil.

"Nigh upon two hundred dollars I had in my possibles, when I went to
that camp to see the boys afore they put out; and you know, Bill, as I
sat to euchre and seven up till every cent was gone.

"'Take back twenty, old coon,' says Big John.

"'H--'s full of such takes back,' says I; and I puts back to town and
fetches the rifle and the old mule, puts my traps into the sack, gets
credit for a couple of pounds of powder at Owin's store, and hyar I ar
on Bijou, with half a pack of beaver, and running meat yet, old hoss; so
put a log on, and let's have a smoke.

"Hurraw, Jake, old coon, bear a hand, and let the squaw put them tails
in the pot; for sun's down, and we'll have to put out pretty early to
reach Black Tail by this time to-morrow. Who's fust guard, boys? them
cussed Rapahos will be after the animals to-night, or I'm no judge of
Injun sign. How many did you see, Maurice?"

"Enfant de gârce, me see bout honderd, when I pass Squirrel Creek, one
dam water-party, parceque they no hosses, and have de lariats for steal
des animaux. Maybe de Yutas in Bayou Salade."

"We'll be having trouble to-night, I'm thinking, if the devils are
about. Whose band was it, Maurice?"

"Slim-Face---I see him ver close--is out; mais I think it White
Wolf's."

"White Wolf, maybe, will lose his hair if he and his band knock round
here too often. That Injun put me afoot when we was out on Sandy that
fall. This nigger owes him one, anyhow."

"H----'s full of White Wolves: go ahead, and roll out some of your doins
across the plains that time."

"You seed sights that spree, eh, boy?"

"_Well_, we did. Some of 'em got their flints fixed this side of Pawnee
Fork, and a heap of mule-meat went wolfing. Just by Little Arkansa we
saw the first Injun. Me and young Somes was ahead for meat, and I had
hobbled the old mule and was approaching some goats, * when I see the
critturs turn back their heads and jump right away from me. 'Hurraw,
Dick!' I shouts, 'hyar's brown-skin acomin', and off I makes for the
mule. The young greenhorn sees the goats runnin' up to him, and not
being up to Injun ways, blazes at the first and knocks him over. Jest
then seven darned red heads top the bluff, and seven Pawnees come
a-screechin' upon us. I cuts the hobbles and jumps on the mule, and,
when I looks back, there was Dick Somes ramming a ball down his gun like
mad, and the Injuns flinging their arrows at him pretty smart, I tell
you.

     * Antelope are frequently called "goats" by the
     mountaineers.

'Hurraw, Dick, mind your hair,' and I ups old Greaser and let one Injun
'have it,' as was going plum into the boy with his lance. _He_ turned on
his back handsome, and Dick gets the ball down at last, blazes away, and
drops another. Then we charged on 'em, and they clears off like runnin'
cows; and I takes the hair off the heads of the two we made meat of; and
I do b'lieve thar's some of them scalps on my old leggings yet.

"Well, Dick was as full of arrows as a porky-pine; one was sticking
right through his cheek, one in his meat-bag, and two more 'bout his
hump-ribs. I tuk'em all out slick, and away we go to camp (for they was
jost a-campin' when we went ahead), and carryin' the goat too. Thar
was a hurroo when we rode in with the scalps at the end of our guns.
'Injuns! Injuns!' was the cry from the greenhorns; 'we'll be 'tacked
to-night, that's certain.'

"''Tacked be--------. says old Bill; 'ain't we men too, and white at
that? Look to your guns, boys; send out a strong hoss-guard with the
animals, and keep your eyes skinned.'

"Well, as soon as the animals were unhitched from the wagons, the guvner
sends out a strong guard, seven boys, and old hands at that. It was
pretty nigh upon sundown, and Bill had just sung out to corral. The boys
were drivin' in the animals, and we were all standing round to get'em
in slick, when, 'howgh-owgh-owgh-owgh,' we hears right behind the bluff,
and 'bout a minute and a perfect crowd of Injuns gallops down upon the
animals. Wagh! warn't thar hoopin'! We jump for the guns, but before we
get to the fires, the Injuns were among the cavayard. I saw Ned Collyer
and his brother, who were in the hoss-guard, let drive at'em; but twenty
Pawnees were round'em before the smoke cleared from their rifles; and
when the crowd broke, the two boys were on the ground and their hair
gone. Well, that ar Englishman just saved the cavayard. He had his
horse, a regular buffalo-runner, picketed round the fire quite handy,
and as soon as he sees the fix, he jumps upon her and rides right into
the thick of the mules, and passes through'em, firing his two-shoot
gun at the Injuns; and, by gor, he made two come. The mules, which was
a-snortin' with funk and running before the Injuns, as soon as they
see the Englishman's mare (mules'll go to h---- after a horse, you all
know), followed her right into the Corral, and thar they was safe. Fifty
Pawnees came screechin' after'em, but we was ready that time, and the
way we throw'd'em was something handsome, I tell you. But three of the
hoss-guard got skeared--leastwise their mules did, and carried'em off
into the peraira, and the Injuns, having enough of us, dashed after 'em
right away. Them poor devils looked back miserable now, with about a
hundred red varmints tearin' after their hair, and whooping like mad.
Young Jem Bulcher was the last; and when he seed it was no use, and his
time was nigh, he throw'd himself off the mule, and standing as upright
as a hickory wiping-stick, he waves his hand to us, and blazes away at
the first Injun as come up, and dropped him slick; but the moment after,
you may guess, _he_ died.

"We could do nothin', for, before our guns were loaded, all three were
dead and their scalps gone. Five of our boys got rubbed out that time,
and seven Injuns lay wolf's meat, while a many more went away gut-shot,
I'll lay. Hows'ever, five of us went under, and the Pawnees made a raise
of a dozen mules, wagh!"

Thus far, in his own words, we have accompanied the old hunter in his
tale; and probably he would have taken us, by the time that the Squaw
Chilipat had pronounced the beaver-tails cooked, safely across the grand
prairies--fording Cotton Wood, Turkey Creek, Little Arkansa, Walnut
Creek, and Pawnee Fork--passed the fireless route of the Coon Creeks,
through a sea of fat buffalo-meat, without fuel to cook it; have struck
the big river, and, leaving at the Crossing the wagons destined for
Santa Fé, have trailed us up the Arkansa to Bent's Fort; thence up
Boiling Spring, across the divide over to the southern fork of the
Platte, away up to the Black Hills, and finally camped us, with hair
still preserved, in the beaver-abounding valleys of the Sweet Water, and
Cache la Poudre, under the rugged shadow of the Wind River Mountains;
if it had not so happened, at this juncture, as all our mountaineers
sat cross-legged round the fire, pipe in mouth, and with Indian gravity
listened to the yarn of the old trapper, interrupting him only with an
occasional wagh! or with the exclamations of some participator in the
events then under narration, who would every now and then put in a
corroborative,--"This child remembers that fix," or, "hyar's a nigger
lifted hair that spree," &c.--that a whizzing noise was heard in the
air, followed by a sharp but suppressed cry from one of the hunters.

In an instant the mountaineers had sprung from their seats, and, seizing
the ever-ready rifle, each one had thrown himself on the ground a few
paces beyond the light of the fire (for it was now nightfall); but not
a word escaped them, as, lying close, with their keen eyes directed
towards the gloom of the thicket, near which the camp was placed, with
rifles cocked, they waited a renewal of the attack. Presently the leader
of the band, no other than Killbuck, who had so lately been recounting
some of his experiences across the plains, and than whom no more
crafty woodsman or more expert trapper ever tracked a deer or grained
a beaver-skin, raised his tall leather-clad form, and, placing his hand
over his mouth, made the prairie ring with the wild protracted note
of an Indian war-whoop. This was instantly repeated from the direction
where the animals belonging to the camp were grazing, under the charge
of the horse-guard. Three shrill whoops answered the warning of the
leader, and showed that the guard was on the watch, and understood the
signal. However, with the manifestation of their presence, the Indians
appeared to be satisfied; or, what is more probable, the act of
aggression had been committed by some daring young warrior, who, being
out on his first expedition, desired to strike the first _coup_, and
thus signalize himself at the outset of the campaign. After waiting some
few minutes, expecting a renewal of the attack, the mountaineers in a
body rose from the ground and made towards the animals, with which
they presently returned to the camp; and after carefully hobbling and
securing them to pickets firmly driven into the ground, mounting an
additional guard, and examining the neighboring thicket, they once
more assembled round the fire, relit their pipes, and puffed away the
cheering weed as composedly as if no such being as a Redskin, thirsting
for their lives, was within a thousand miles of their perilous
encampment.

"If ever thar was bad Injuns on these plains," at last growled Killbuck,
biting hard the pipestem between his teeth, "it's these Rapahos, and the
meanest kind at that."

"Can't beat the Blackfeet, anyhow," chimed in one La Bonté, from
the Yellow Stone country, a fine handsome specimen of a mountaineer.
"However, one of you quit this arrow out of my hump," he continued,
bending forwards to the fire, and exhibiting an arrow sticking out
under his right shoulder-blade, and a stream of blood trickling down his
buckskin coat from the wound.

This his nearest neighbor essayed to do; but finding, after a tug, that
it "would not come," expressed his opinion that the offending weapon
would have to be "butchered" out. This was accordingly effected with the
ready blade of a scalp-knife; and a handful of beaver-fur being placed
on the wound, and secured by a strap of buckskin round the body, the
wounded man donned his hunting-shirt once more, and coolly set about
lighting his pipe, his rifle lying across his lap cocked and ready for
use.

It was now near midnight--dark and misty; and the clouds, rolling away
to the eastward from the lofty ridges of the Rocky Mountains, were
gradually obscuring the dim starlight. As the lighter vapors faded from
the mountains, a thick black cloud succeeded them, and settled over the
loftier peaks of the chain, faintly visible through the gloom of night,
whilst a mass of fleecy scud soon overspread the whole sky. A hollow
moaning sound crept through the valley, and the upper branches of the
cotton woods, with their withered leaves, began to rustle with the
first breath of the coming storm. Huge drops of rain fell at intervals,
hissing as they dropped into the blazing fires, and pattering on the
skins with which the hunters hurriedly covered the exposed baggage. The
mules near the camp cropped the grass with quick and greedy bites round
the circuit of their pickets, as if conscious that the storm would soon
prevent their feeding, and already humped their backs as the chilling
rain fell upon their flanks. The prairie wolves crept closer to the
camp, and in the confusion that ensued from the hurry of the trappers
to cover the perishable portions of their equipment, contrived more than
once to dart off with a piece of meat, when their peculiar and mournful
chiding would be heard as they fought for the possession of the ravished
morsel.

When everything was duly protected, the men set to work to spread their
beds; those who had not troubled themselves to erect a shelter, getting
under the lee of the piles of packs and saddles; whilst Killbuck,
disdaining even such care of his carcass, threw his buffalo robe on the
bare ground, declaring his intention to "take" what was coming at all
hazards, and "anyhow." Selecting a high spot, he drew his knife and
proceeded to cut drains round it, to prevent the water running into him
as he lay; then taking a single robe, he carefully spread it, placing
under the end furthest from the fire a large stone brought from the
creek. Having satisfactorily adjusted this pillow, he added another robe
to the one already laid, and placed over all a Navajo blanket, supposed
to be impervious to rain. Then he divested himself of his pouch and
powder-horn, which, with his rifle, he placed inside his bed, and
quickly covered up lest the wet should reach them. Having performed
these operations to his satisfaction, he lighted his pipe by the hissing
embers of the half-extinguished fire (for by this time the rain poured
in torrents), and went the rounds of the picketed animals, cautioning
the guard round the camp to keep their "eyes skinned, for there would be
powder burned before morning." Then returning to the fire, and kicking
with his moccasined foot the slumbering ashes, he squatted down before
it, and thus soliloquized:--

"Thirty year have I been knocking about these mountains from Missoura's
head as far sothe as the starving Gila. I've trapped a heap, * and many
a hundred pack of beaver I've traded in my time, wagh! What has come of
it, and whar's the dollars as ought to be in my possibles? Whar's the
ind of this, I say? Is a man to be hunted by Injuns all his days? Many's
the time I've said I'd strike for Taos, and trap a squaw, for this
child's getting old, and feels like wanting a woman's face about his
lodge for the balance of his days; but when it comes to caching of the
old traps, I've the smallest kind of heart, I have. Certain, the old
State comes across my mind now and again, but who's thar to remember my
old body? But them diggings gets too overcrowded nowadays, and it's
hard to fetch breath amongst them big bands of corncrackers to Missoura.
Beside, it goes against natur' to leave bufler-meat and feed on hog;
and them white gals are too much like picturs, and a deal too 'fofarraw'
(fanfaron). No; darn the settlements, I say. It won't shine, and whar's
the dollars? Hows'ever, beaver's bound to rise; human natur' can't go
on selling beaver a dollar a pound; no, no, that arn't a going to shine
much longer, I know. Them was the times when this child first went to
the mountains: six dollars the plew--old'un or kitten! Wagh! but it's
bound to rise, I says agin; and hyar's a coon knows whar to lay his hand
on a dozen pack right handy, and then he'll take the Taos trail, wagh!"

     * An Indian is always "a heap" hungry or thirsty--loves "a
     heap"--is "a heap" brave; in fact, "a heap" is tantamount to
     very much.

Thus soliloquizing, Killbuck knocked the ashes from his pipe, and placed
it in the gaily ornamented case that hung round his neck, drew his
knife-belt a couple of holes tighter, resumed his pouch and powder-horn,
took his rifle, which he carefully covered with the folds of his Navajo
blanket, and, striding into the darkness, cautiously reconnoitered the
vicinity of the camp. When he returned to the fire he sat himself down
as before, but this time with his rifle across his lap; and at intervals
his keen gray eyes glanced piercingly around, particularly towards an
old weatherbeaten and grizzled mule, who now, old stager as she was,
having filled her belly, stood lazily over her picket-pin, with her head
bent down and her long ears flapping over her face, her limbs gathered
under her, and her back arched to throw off the rain, tottering from
side to side as she rested and slept.

"Yep, old gal!" cried Killbuck to the animal, at the same time picking
a piece of burnt wood from the fire and throwing it at her, at which
the mule gathered itself up and cocked her ears as she recognized her
master's voice. "Yep, old gal! and keep your nose open; thar's brown
skin about, I'm thinkin', and maybe you'll get roped (lasso'd) by a
Rapaho afore mornin'." Again the old trapper settled himself before
the fire; and soon his head began to nod, as drowsiness stole over him.
Already he was in the land of dreams; revelling amongst bands of "fat
cow," or hunting along a stream well peopled with beaver; with no Indian
"sign" to disturb him, and the merry rendezvous in close perspective,
and his peltry selling briskly at six dollars the plew, and galore of
alcohol to ratify the trade. Or, perhaps, threading the back trail of
his memory, he passed rapidly through the perilous vicissitudes of his
hard, hard life--starving one day, reveling in abundance the next; now
beset by whooping savages thirsting for his blood, baying his enemies
like the hunted deer, but with the unflinching courage of a man; now,
all care thrown aside, secure and forgetful of the past, a welcome guest
in the hospitable trading fort; or back, as the trail gets fainter, to
his childhood's home in the brown forests of old Kentuck, tended and
cared for--his only thought to enjoy the hominy and johnny cakes of his
thrifty mother. Once more, in warm and well-remembered homespun, he sits
on the snake-fence round the old clearing, and, munching his hoe-cake at
set of sun, listens to the mournful note of the whip-poor-will, or the
harsh cry of the noisy catbird, or watches the agile gambols of the
squirrels as they chase each other, chattering the while, from branch to
branch of the lofty tamarisks, wondering how long it will be before he
will be able to lift his father's heavy rifle, and use it against the
tempting game. Sleep, however, sat lightly on the eyes of the wary
mountaineer, and a snort from the old mule in an instant stretched his
every nerve. Without a movement of his body, his keen eye fixed itself
upon the mule, which now stood with head bent round, and eyes and ears
pointed in one direction, snuffing the night air and snorting with
apparent fear. A low sound from the wakeful hunter roused the others
from their sleep; and raising their bodies from their well-soaked beds,
a single word apprised them of their danger.

"Injuns!"

Scarcely was the word out of Killbuck's lips, when, above the howling of
the furious wind and the pattering of the rain, a hundred savage yells
broke suddenly upon their ears from all directions round the camp; a
score of rifle-shots rattled from the thicket, and a cloud of arrows
whistled through the air, whilst a crowd of Indians charged upon the
picketed animals. "Owgh! owgh--owgh--owgh--g-h-h!"

"A foot, by gor!" shouted Killbuck, "and the old mule gone at that.
On'em, boys, for old Kentuck!" And he rushed towards his mule, which
jumped and snorted mad with fright, as a naked Indian strove to fasten a
lariat round her nose, having already cut the rope which fastened her to
the picket-pin.

"Quit that, you cussed devil!" roared the trapper, as he jumped upon
the savage, and, without raising his rifle to his shoulder, made a
deliberate thrust with the muzzle at his naked breast, striking him
full, and at the same time pulling the trigger, actually driving the
Indian two paces backwards with the shock, when he fell in a heap, and
dead. But at the same moment, an Indian, sweeping his club round his
head, brought it with frightful force down upon Killbuck. For a moment
the hunter staggered, threw out his arms wildly into the air, and fell
headlong to the ground.

"Owgh! owgh, owgh-h-h!" cried the Rapaho, and, striding over the
prostrate body, he seized with his left hand the middle lock of the
trapper's long hair, and drew his knife round the head to separate the
scalp from the skull. As he bent over to his work, the trapper named La
Bonté saw his companion's peril, rushed quick as thought at the Indian,
and buried his knife to the hilt between his shoulders. With a gasping
shudder the Rapaho fell dead upon the prostrate body of his foe.

The attack, however, lasted but a few seconds. The dash at the animals
had been entirely successful, and, driving them before them with loud
cries, the Indians disappeared quickly in the darkness. Without waiting
for daylight, two of the three trappers who alone were to be seen,
and who had been within the shanties at the time of attack, without a
moment's delay commenced packing two horses, which having been fastened
to the shanties had escaped the Indians, and, placing their squaws upon
them, showering curses and imprecations on their enemies, left the camp,
fearful of another onset, and resolved to retreat and câche themselves
until the danger was over. Not so La Bonté, who, stout and true, had
done his best in the fight, and now sought the body of his old comrade,
from which, before he could examine the wounds, he had first to remove
the corpse of the Indian he had slain. Killbuck still breathed. He had
been stunned; but, revived by the cold rain beating upon his face, he
soon opened his eyes, and recognized his trusty friend, who, sitting
down, lifted his head into his lap, and wiped away the blood that
streamed from the wounded scalp.

"Is the top-knot gone, boy?" asked Killbuck; "for my head feels
queersome, I tell you."

"Thar's the Injun as felt like lifting it," answered the other, kicking
the dead body with his foot.

"Wagh! boy, you've struck a coup; so scalp the nigger right off, and
then fetch me a drink."

The morning broke clear and cold. With the exception of a light cloud
which hung over Pike's Peak, the sky was spotless; and a perfect calm
had succeeded the boisterous storm of the previous night. The creek was
swollen and turbid with the rains; and as La Bonté proceeded a little
distance down the bank to find a passage to the water, he suddenly
stopped short, and an involuntary cry escaped him. Within a few feet of
the bank lay the body of one of his companions, who had formed the guard
at the time of the Indians' attack. It was lying on the face, pierced
through the chest with an arrow which was buried to the very feathers,
and the scalp torn from the bloody skull. Beyond, but all within a
hundred yards, lay the three others, dead, and similarly mutilated. So
certain had been the aim, and so close the enemy, that each had died
without a struggle, and consequently had been unable to alarm the camp.
La Bonté, with a glance at the bank, saw at once that the wily Indians
had crept along the creek, the noise of the storm facilitating their
approach undiscovered, and, crawling up the bank, had watched their
opportunity to shoot simultaneously the four hunters on guard.

Returning to Killbuck, he apprised him of the melancholy fate of their
companions, and held a council of war as to their proceedings. The old
hunter's mind was soon made up. "First," said he, "I get back my old
mule; she's carried me and my traps these twelve years, and I ain't
a-goin' to lose her yet. Second, I feel like taking hair, and some
Rapahos has to go under for this night's work. Third, we have got to
câche the beaver. Fourth, we take the Injun trail, wharever it leads."

No more daring mountaineer than La Bonté ever trapped a beaver, and no
counsel could have more exactly tallied with his own inclination than
the law laid down by old Killbuck.

"Agreed," was his answer, and forthwith he set about forming a câche. In
this instance they had not sufficient time to construct a regular one,
so they contented themselves with securing their packs of beaver in
buffalo robes, and tying them in the forks of several cotton-woods,
under which the camp had been made. This done, they lit a fire, and
cooked some buffalo-meat; and, whilst smoking a pipe, carefully cleaned
their rifles, and filled their horns and pouches with good store of
ammunition.

A prominent feature in the character of the hunters of the Far West is
their quick determination and resolve in cases of extreme difficulty and
peril, and their fixedness of purpose, when any plan of operations has
been laid requiring bold and instant action in carrying out. It is
here that they so infinitely surpass the savage Indian in bringing to a
successful issue their numerous hostile expeditions against the natural
foe of the white man in the wild and barbarous regions of the West.
Ready to resolve as they are prompt to execute, and combining far
greater dash and daring with equal subtlety and caution, they, possess
great advantage over the vacillating Indian, whose superstitious mind
in a great degree paralyzes the physical energy of his active body; and
who, by waiting for propitious signs and seasons before he undertakes
an enterprise, often loses the opportunity by which his white and more
civilized enemy knows so well how to profit.

Killbuck and La Bonté were no exceptions to this characteristic rule;
and before the sun was a hand's-breadth above the eastern horizon,
the two hunters were running on the trail of the victorious Indians.
Striking from the creek where the night attack was made, they crossed to
another known as Kioway, running parallel to Bijou, a few hours' journey
westward, and likewise heading in the divide. Following this to its
forks, they struck into the upland prairies lying at the foot of the
mountains; and crossing to the numerous watercourses which feed the
creek called Vermillion or Cherry, they pursued the trail over the
mountain-spurs until it reached a fork of the Boiling Spring. Here the
war-party had halted and held a consultation, for from this point the
trail turned at a tangent to the westward, and entered the rugged gorges
of the mountains. It was now evident to the two trappers that their
destination was the Bayou Salade, *--a mountain valley which is a
favorite resort of the buffalo in the winter season, and which, and for
this reason, is often frequented by the Yuta Indians as their wintering
ground. That the Rapahos were on a war expedition against the Yutas,
there was little doubt; and Killbuck, who knew every inch of the ground,
saw at once, by the direction the trail had taken, that they were making
for the Bayou in order to surprise their enemies, and, therefore, were
not following the usual Indian trail up the canon of the Boiling Spring
river. Having made up his mind to this, he at once struck across the
broken ground lying at the foot of the mountains, steering a course a
little to the eastward of north, or almost in the direction whence
he had come; and then, pointing westward, about noon he crossed a
mountain-chain, and descending into a ravine through which a little
rivulet tumbled over its rocky bed, he at once proved the correctness of
his judgment by striking the Indian trail, now quite fresh, as it
wound through the canon along the bank of the stream. The route he had
followed, impracticable to pack-animals, had saved at least half-a-day's
journey, and brought them within a short distance of the object of their
pursuit; for, at the head of the gorge, a lofty bluff presenting itself,
the hunters ascended to the summit, and, looking down, descried at
their very feet the Indian camp, with their own stolen cavallada feeding
quietly round.

     * The old name of South Park, Colorado. (Ed.)

"Wagh!" exclaimed both the hunters in a breath. "And thar's the old
gal at that," chuckled Killbuck, as he recognized his old grizzled mule
making good play at the rich buffalo grass with which these mountain
valleys abound.

"If we don't make a raise afore long, I wouldn't say so. Thar plans is
plain to this child as beaver sign. They're after Yuta hair, as certain
as this gun has got hind-sights; but they arn't a-goin' to pack them
animals after'em, and have crawled like rattlers along this bottom to
cache'em till they come back from the Bayou,--and maybe they'll leave
half-a-dozen soldiers * with'em."

     * The young untried warriors of the Indians are thus called.

How right the wily trapper was in his conjectures will be shortly
proved. Meanwhile, with his companion, he descended the bluff, and
pushing his way into a thicket of dwarf pine and cedar, sat down on a
log, and drew from an end of the blanket strapped on his shoulder, a
portion of a buffalo's liver, which they both discussed, _raw_, with
infinite relish; eating in lieu of bread (an unknown luxury in these
parts) sundry strips of dried fat. To have kindled a fire would have
been dangerous, since it was not impossible that some of the Indians
might leave their camp to hunt, when the smoke would at once have
betrayed the presence of enemies. A light was struck, however, for their
pipes; and after enjoying this true consolation for some time, they laid
a blanket on the ground, and, side by side, soon fell asleep.

If Killbuck had been a prophet, or the most prescient of medicine-men,
he could not have more exactly predicted the movements in the Indian
camp. About three hours before sundown he rose and shook himself, which
movement was sufficient to awaken his companion. Telling La Bonté to
lie down again and rest, he gave him to understand that he was about to
reconnoiter the enemy's camp; and after carefully examining his rifle,
and drawing his knife-belt a hole or two tighter, he proceeded on
his dangerous errand. Ascending the same bluff whence he had first
discovered the Indian camp, he glanced rapidly around, and made himself
master of the features of the ground--choosing a ravine by which
he might approach the camp more closely, and without danger of being
discovered. This was soon effected; and in half an hour the trapper
was lying on his belly on the summit of a pine-covered bluff which
overlooked the Indians within easy rifle-shot, and so perfectly
concealed by the low spreading branches of the cedar and arbor-vitæ,
that not a particle of his person could be detected; unless, indeed, his
sharp twinkling gray eye contrasted too strongly with the green boughs
that covered the rest of his face.

Moreover, there was no danger of their hitting upon his trail, for he
had been careful to pick his steps on the rock-covered ground, so
that not a track of his moccasin was visible. Here he lay, still as a
carcajou in wait for a deer, only now and then shaking the boughs as his
body quivered with a suppressed chuckle, when any movement in the
Indian camp caused him to laugh inwardly at his (if they had known
it) unwelcome propinquity. He was not a little surprised, however, to
discover that the party was much smaller than he had imagined, counting
only forty warriors; and this assured him that the band had divided,
one half taking the Yuta trail by the Boiling Spring, the other (the
one before him) taking a longer circuit in order to reach the Bayou, and
make the attack on the Yutas, in a different direction.

At this moment the Indians were in deliberation. Seated in a large
circle round a very small fire, * the smoke from which ascended in a
thin straight column, they each in turn puffed a huge cloud of smoke
from three or four long cherry-stemmed pipes, which went the round of the
party; each warrior touching the ground with the heel of the pipe-bowl,
and turning the stem upwards and away from him as medicine to the Great
Spirit, before he himself inhaled the fragrant kin-nik-kinnik. The
council, however, was not general, for only fifteen of the older
warriors took part in it, the others sitting outside, and at some little
distance from the circle. Behind each were his arms--bow and quiver,
and shield--hanging from a spear stuck in the ground; and a few guns in
ornamented covers of buckskin were added to some of the equipments.

     * There is a great difference between an Indian's fire and a
     white's. The former places the ends of logs to burn
     gradually; the latter, the center, besides making such a
     bonfire that the Indians truly say, "The white makes a fire
     so hot that he cannot approach to warm himself by it."

Near the fire, and in the center of the inner circle, a spear was
fixed upright in the ground, and on this dangled the four scalps of the
trappers killed the preceding night; and underneath them, affixed to the
same spear, was the mystic medicine-bag, by which Killbuck knew that the
band before him was under the command of the chief of the tribe.

Towards the grim trophies on the spear, the warriors, who in turn
addressed the council, frequently pointed--more than one, as he did so,
making the gyratory motion of the right hand and arm which the Indians
use in describing that they have gained an advantage by skill or
cunning. Then pointing westward, the speaker would thrust out his arm,
extending his fingers at the same time, and closing and reopening them
repeatedly--meaning, that although four scalps already ornamented the
medicine pole, they were as nothing compared to the numerous trophies
they would bring from the Salt Valley, where they expected to find their
hereditary enemies the Yutas. "That now was not the time to count their
coups" (for at this moment one of the warriors rose from his seat, and,
swelling with pride, advanced towards the spear, pointing to one of the
scalps, and then striking his open hand on his naked breast, jumped into
the air, as if about to go through the ceremony); "that before many suns
all their spears together would not hold the scalps they had taken; and
that they would return to their village, and spend a moon relating their
achievements and counting coups."

All this Killbuck learned,--thanks to his knowledge of the language of
signs--a master of which, if even he have no ears or tongue, never fails
to understand, and be understood by, any of the hundred tribes whose
languages are perfectly distinct and different. He learned, moreover,
that at sundown the greater part of the band would resume the trail, in
order to reach the Bayou by the earliest dawn; and also, that no more
than four or five of the younger warriors would remain with the captured
animals. Still the hunter remained in his position until the sun had
disappeared behind the ridge; when, taking up their arms, and throwing
their buffalo-robes on their shoulders, the war-party of Rapahos, one
behind the other, with noiseless step and silent as the dumb, moved away
from the camp. When the last dusky form had disappeared behind a point
of rocks which shut in the northern end of the little valley or ravine,
Killbuck withdrew his head from its screen, crawled backwards on his
stomach from the edge of the bluff, and, rising from the ground,
shook and stretched himself; then gave one cautious look around, and
immediately proceeded to rejoin his companion.

"_Lave_ (get up), boy," said Killbuck, as soon as he reached him.
"Hyar's grainin' to do afore long--and sun's about down, I'm thinking."

"Ready, old hoss," answered La Bonté, giving himself a shake. "What's
the sign like, and how many's the lodge?"

"Fresh, and five, boy. How do you feel?"

"_Half froze for hair_. Wagh!"

"We'll have moon to-night, and as soon as she gets up, we'll make'em
come."

Killbuck then described to his companion what he had seen, and detailed
his plan. This was simply to wait until the moon afforded sufficient
light, then to approach the Indian camp and charge into it, "lift" as
much "hair" as they could, recover their animals, and start at once
to the Bayou and join the friendly Yutas, warning them of the coming
danger. The risk of falling in with either of the Rapaho bands was
hardly considered; to avoid this they trusted to their own foresight,
and the legs of their mules, should they encounter them.

Between sundown and the rising of the moon they had leisure to eat
their supper, which, as before, consisted of raw buffalo-liver; after
discussing which, Killbuck pronounced himself "a heap" better, and ready
for "huggin'."

In the short interval of almost perfect darkness which preceded the
moonlight, and taking advantage of one of the frequent squalls of wind
which howl down the narrow gorges of the mountains, these two determined
men, with footsteps noiseless as the panther's, crawled to the edge of
the little plateau of some hundred yards square, where the five
Indians in charge of the animals were seated round the fire, perfectly
unconscious of the vicinity of danger. Several clumps of cedar-bushes
dotted the small prairie, and amongst these the well-hobbled mules
and horses were feeding. These animals, accustomed to the presence of
whites, would not notice the two hunters as they crept from clump to
clump nearer to the fire, and also served, even if the Indians should be
on the watch, to conceal their movements from them.

This the two men at once perceived; but old Killbuck knew that if he
passed within sight or smell of his mule, he would be received with a
whinny of recognition, which would at once alarm the enemy. He therefore
first ascertained where his own animal was feeding, which luckily was
at the farther side of the prairie, and would not interfere with his
proceedings.

Threading their way amongst the feeding mules, they approached a clump
of bushes about forty yards from the spot where the unconscious savages
were seated smoking round the fire; and here they awaited, scarcely
drawing breath the while, the moment when the moon rose above the
mountain into the clear cold sky, and gave them light sufficient to make
sure their work of bloody retribution. Not a pulsation in the hearts of
these stem determined men beat higher than its wont; not the tremor of a
nerve disturbed their frame. They stood with lips compressed and rifles
ready, their pistols loosened in their belts, their scalp-knives handy
to their grip. The lurid glow of the coming moon already shot into the
sky above the ridge, which stood out in bold relief against the light;
and the luminary herself just peered over the mountain, illuminating
its pine-clad summit, and throwing her beams on an opposite peak, when
Killbuck touched his companion's arm, and whispered, "Wait for the full
light, boy.",

At this moment, however, unseen by the trapper, the old grizzled mule
had gradually approached, as she fed along the plateau; and, when within
a few paces of their retreat, a gleam of moonshine revealed to the
animal the erect forms of the two whites. Suddenly she stood still and
pricked her ears, and stretching out her neck and nose, snuffed the air.
Well she knew her old master.

Killbuck, with eyes fixed upon the Indians, was on the point of giving
the signal of attack to his comrade, when the shrill whinny of his mule
reverberated through the gorge. The Indians jumped to their feet and
seized their arms, when Killbuck, with a loud shout of "At'em, boy; give
the niggers h----!" rushed from his concealment, and with La Bonté by
his side, yelling a fierce war-whoop, sprang upon the startled savages.

Panic-struck with the suddenness of the attack, the Indians scarcely
knew where to run, and for a moment stood huddled together like sheep.
Down dropped Killbuck on his knee, and stretching out his wiping-stick,
planted it on the ground at the extreme length of his arm. As
methodically and as coolly as if about to aim at a deer, he raised his
rifle to this rest and pulled the trigger. At the report an Indian
fell forward on his face, at the same moment that La Bonté, with equal
certainty of aim, and like effect, discharged his own rifle.

The three surviving Indians, seeing that their assailants were but two,
and knowing that their guns were empty, came on with loud yells. With
the left hand grasping a bunch of arrows, and holding the bow already
bent, and arrow fixed, they steadily advanced, bending low to the ground
to get their objects between them and the light, and thus render their
aim more certain. The trappers, however, did not care to wait for them.
Drawing their pistols, they charged at once; and although the bows
twanged, and the three arrows struck their mark, on they rushed,
discharging their pistols at close quarters. La Bonté threw his empty
one at the head of an Indian who was pulling his second arrow to its
head at a yard's distance, drew his knife at the same moment, and made
at him.

But the Indian broke and ran, followed by his surviving companion; and
as soon as Killbuck could ram home another ball, he sent a shot flying
after them as they scrambled up the mountain-side, leaving in their
fright and hurry their bows and shields on the ground.

The fight was over, and the two trappers confronted each other: "We've
given'em h----!" laughed Killbuck.

"_Well_, we have," answered the other, pulling an arrow out of his arm.
"Wagh!"

"We'll lift the hair, anyhow," continued the first, "afore the scalp's
cold."

Taking his whetstone from the little sheath on his knife-belt, the
trapper proceeded to "edge" his knife, and then stepping to the first
prostrate body, he turned it over to examine if any symptom of vitality
remained. "Thrown cold!" he exclaimed, as he dropped the lifeless arm he
had lifted. "I sighted him about the long ribs, but the light was bad,
and I couldn't get a bead offhand anyhow."

Seizing with his left hand the long and braided lock on the center of
the Indian's head, he passed the point edge of his keen butcher-knife
round the parting, turning it at the same time under the skin to
separate the scalp from the skull; then with a quick and sudden jerk of
his hand, he removed it entirely from the head, and giving the reeking
trophy a wring upon the grass to free it from the blood, he coolly
hitched it under his belt, and proceeded to the next; but seeing La
Bonté operating upon this, he sought the third, who lay some little
distance from the others. This one was still alive, a pistol-ball having
passed through his body without touching a vital spot.

"Gut-shot is this nigger," exclaimed the trapper; "them pistols never
throws'em in their tracks;" and thrusting his knife, for mercy's sake,
into the bosom of the Indian, he likewise tore the scalp-lock from his
head, and placed it with the other.

La Bonté had received two trivial wounds, and Killbuck till now had
been walking about with an arrow sticking through the fleshy part of his
thigh, the point being perceptible near the surface of the other side.
To free his leg from the painful encumbrance, he thrust the weapon
completely through, and then, cutting off the arrowhead below the barb,
he drew it out, the blood flowing freely from the wound. A tourniquet
of buckskin soon stopped this, and, heedless of the pain, the hardy
mountaineer sought for his old mule, and quickly brought it to the
fire (which La Bonté had rekindled), lavishing many a caress, and
most comical terms of endearment, upon the faithful companion of his
wanderings. They found all the animals safe and well; and after eating
heartily of some venison which the Indians had been cooking at the
moment of the attack, made instant preparations to quit the scene of
their exploit, not wishing to trust to the chance of the Rapahos being
too frightened to again molest them.

Having no saddles, they secured buffalo-robes on the backs of two
mules--Killbuck, of course, riding his own--and lost no time in
proceeding on their way. They followed the course of the Indians up the
stream, and found that it kept the canons and gorges of the mountains,
where the road was better; but it was with no little difficulty that
they made their way, the ground being much broken, and covered with
rocks. Kill-buck's wound became very painful, and his leg stiffened
and swelled distressingly, but he still pushed on all night, and at
daybreak, recognizing their position, he left the Indian trail, and
followed a little creek which rose in a mountain-chain of moderate
elevation, and above which, and to the south, Pike's Peak towered high
into the clouds. With great difficulty they crossed this ridge, and
ascending and descending several smaller ones, which gradually smoothed
away as they met the valley, about three hours after sunrise they found
themselves in the south-east corner of the Bayou Salade.

The Bayou Salade, or Salt Valley, is the most southern of three very
extensive valleys, forming a series of tablelands in the very center of
the main chain of the Rocky Mountains, known to the trappers by the name
of the "Parks." The numerous streams by which they are watered abound in
the valuable fur-bearing beaver, whilst every species of game common to
the West is found here in great abundance. The Bayou Salade especially,
owing to the salitrose nature of the soil and springs, is the favorite
resort of all the larger animals common to the mountains; and in the
sheltered prairies of the Bayou, the buffalo, forsaking the barren and
inclement regions of the exposed plains, frequent these upland valleys
in the winter months; and feeding upon the rich and nutritious buffalo
grass, which on the bare prairies at that season is either dry and
rotten or entirely exhausted, not only sustain life, but retain a great
portion of the "condition" that the abundant fall and summer pasture of
the lowlands has laid upon their bones, Therefore is this valley sought
by the Indians as a wintering-ground. Its occupancy has been disputed by
most of the mountain tribes, and long and bloody wars have been waged
to make good the claims set forth by Yuta, Rapaho, Sioux, and Shians. *
However, to the first of these it may be said now to belong, since their
"big village" has wintered there for many successive years; whilst the
Rapahos seldom visit it unless on war expeditions against the Yutas.

     * Utahs, Arapahoes, Sioux, and Cheyennes. (Ed.)

Judging, from the direction the Rapahos were taking, that the friendly
tribe of Yutas were there already, the trappers had resolved to join
them as soon as possible; and therefore, without resting, pushed
on through the uplands, and, towards the middle of the day, had the
satisfaction of descrying the conical lodges of the village, situated on
a large level plateau, through which ran a mountain stream. A numerous
band of mules and horses were scattered over the pasture, and round them
several mounted Indians kept guard. As the trappers descended the
bluffs into the plain, some straggling Indians caught sight of them;
and instantly one of them, lassoing a horse from the herd, mounted it,
barebacked, and flew like wind to the village to spread the news. Soon
the lodges disgorged their inmates; first the women and children rushed
to the side of the strangers' approach; then the younger Indians, unable
to restrain their curiosity, mounted their horses, and galloped forth
to meet them. The old chiefs, enveloped in buffalo-robes (softly and
delicately dressed as the Yutas alone know how), and with tomahawk held
in one hand and resting in the hollow of the other arm, sallied last of
all from their lodges; and, squatting in a row on a sunny bank outside
the village, awaited, with dignified composure, the arrival of the
whites. Killbuck was well known to most of them, having trapped in their
country and traded with them years before at Roubideau's fort at
the head waters of the Rio Grande. After shaking hands with all who
presented themselves, he at once gave them to understand that their
enemies, the Rapahos, were at hand, with a hundred warriors at least,
elated by the coup they had just struck against the whites, bringing,
moreover, four white scalps to incite them to brave deeds.

At this news the whole village was speedily in commotion: the war-shout
was taken up from lodge to lodge; the squaws began to lament and tear
their hair; the warriors to paint and arm themselves. The elder chiefs
immediately met in council, and, over the medicine-pipe, debated as to
the best course to pursue--whether to wait the attack, or sally out and
meet the enemy. In the meantime, the braves were collected together by
the chiefs of their respective bands; and scouts, mounted on the fastest
horses, despatched in every direction to procure intelligence of the
enemy.

The two whites, after watering their mules and picketing them in some
good grass near the village, drew near the council fire, without,
however, joining in the "talk," until they were invited to take their
seats by the eldest chief. Then Killbuck was called upon to give
his opinion as to the direction in which he judged the Rapahos to be
approaching, which he delivered in their own language, with which he was
well acquainted. In a short time the council broke up; and without noise
or confusion, a band of one hundred chosen warriors left the village,
immediately after one of the scouts had galloped in and communicated
some intelligence to the chiefs. Killbuck and La Bonté volunteered to
accompany the war-party, weak and exhausted as they were; but this was
negatived by the chiefs, who left their white brothers to the care of
the women, who tended their wounds, now stiff and painful; and spreading
their buffalo-robes in a warm and roomy lodge, left them to the repose
they so much needed.




CHAPTER II

|THE next morning Killbuck's leg was greatly inflamed, and he was unable
to leave the lodge; but he made his companion bring the old mule to the
door, that he might give her a couple of ears of Indian corn, the last
remains of the slender store brought by the Indians from the Navajo
country. The day passed, and sundown brought no tidings of the
war-party. This caused no little wailing on the part of the squaws,
but was interpreted by the whites as a favorable augury. A little after
sunrise on the second morning, the long line of the returning warriors
was discerned winding over the prairie, and a scout having galloped in
to bring the news of a great victory, the whole village was soon in a
ferment of paint and drumming. A short distance from the lodges, the
warriors halted to await the approach of the people. Old men, children,
and squaws sitting astride their horses, sallied out to escort the
victorious party in triumph to the village. With loud shouts and
songs, and drums beating the monotonous Indian time, they advanced and
encircled the returning braves, one of whom, his face covered with black
paint, carried a pole on which dangled thirteen scalps, the trophies
of the expedition. As he lifted these on high they were saluted with
deafening whoops, and cries of exultation and savage joy. In this manner
they entered the village, almost before the friends of those fallen in
the fight had ascertained their losses. Then the shouts of delight were
converted into yells of grief; the mothers and wives of those braves
who had been killed (and seven had "gone under") presently returned with
their faces, necks, and hands blackened, and danced and howled round the
scalp-pole, which had been deposited in the center of the village, in
front of the lodge of the great chief.

Killbuck now learned that a scout having brought intelligence that the
two band's of Rapa-hos were hastening to form a junction, as soon
as they learned that their approach was discovered, the Yutas had
successfully prevented it; and attacking one party, had entirely
defeated it, killing thirteen of the Rapaho braves. The other party had
fled on seeing the issue of the fight, and a few of the Yuta warriors
were now pursuing them.

To celebrate so signal a victory, great preparations sounded their notes
through the village. Paints--vermilion and ochres, red and yellow--were
in great request; whilst the scrapings of charred wood, mixed with
gunpowder, were used as substitute for black, the medicine color.

The lodges of the village, numbering some two hundred or more, were
erected in parallel lines, and covered a large space of the level
prairie in shape of a parallelogram. In the center, however, the
space which half-a-dozen lodges in length would have taken up was
left unoccupied, save by one large one, of red-painted buffalo-skins,
tattooed with the mystic totems of the medicine peculiar to the nation.
In front of this stood the grim scalp-pole, like a decayed tree-trunk,
its bloody fruit tossing in the wind; and on another pole, at a few feet
distance, was hung the bag with its mysterious contents. Before each
lodge a tripod of spears supported the arms and shields of the Yuta
chivalry, and on many of them smoke-dried scalps rattled in the wind,
former trophies of the dusky knights who were arming themselves within.
Heraldic devices were not wanting--not, however, graved upon the
shield, but hanging from the spear-head, the actual totem of the warrior
it distinguished. The rattlesnake, the otter, the carcajou, the mountain
badger, the war-eagle, the konqua-kish, the porcupine, the fox, &c.,
dangled their well-stuffed skins, displaying the guardian medicine
of the warriors they pertained to, and representing the mental and
corporeal qualities which were supposed to characterize the braves to
whom they belonged.

From the center lodge, two or three medicinemen, fantastically attired
in the skins of wolves and bears, and bearing long peeled wands of
cherry in their hands, occasionally emerged to tend a very small fire
which they had kindled in the center of the open space; and when a thin
column of smoke arose, one of them planted the scalp-pole obliquely
across the fire. Squaws in robes of white dressed buckskin, garnished
with beads and porcupines' quills, and their faces painted bright red
and black, then appeared. These ranged themselves round the outside of
the square, the boys and children of all ages, mounted on barebacked
horses, galloping round and round, and screaming with eagerness,
excitement, and curiosity.

Presently the braves and warriors made their appearance, and squatted
round the fire in two circles, those who had been engaged on the
expedition being in the first or smaller one. One medicine-man sat under
the scalp-pole, having a drum between his knees, which he tapped
at intervals with his hand, eliciting from the instrument a hollow
monotonous sound. A bevy of women, shoulder to shoulder, then advanced
from the four sides of the square, and some, shaking a rattle-drum in
time with their steps, commenced a jumping, jerking dance, now lifting
one foot from the ground, and now rising with both, accompanying the
dance with a chant, which swelled from a low whisper to the utmost
extent of their voices--now dying away, and again bursting into
vociferous measure. Thus they advanced to the center and retreated to
their former positions; when six squaws, with their faces painted a dead
black, made their appearance from the crowd, chanting, in soft and sweet
measure, a lament for the braves the nation had lost in the late battle:
but soon as they drew near the scalp-pole, their melancholy note changed
to the music (to them) of gratified revenge. In a succession of jumps,
raising the feet alternately but a little distance from the ground, they
made their way, through an interval left in the circle of warriors, to
the grim pole, and encircling it, danced in perfect silence round it for
a few moments. Then they burst forth with an extempore song, laudatory
of the achievements of their victorious braves. They addressed the
scalps as "sisters" (to be called a squaw is the greatest insult that
can be offered to an Indian), and, spitting at them, upbraided them with
their rashness in leaving their lodges to seek for Yuta husbands; "that
the Yuta warriors and young men despised them, and chastised them for
their forwardness and presumption, bringing back their scalps to their
own women."

After sufficiently proving that they had anything but lost the use of
their tongues, but possessed, on the contrary, as fair a length of that
formidable weapon as any of their sex, they withdrew, and left the field
in undisputed possession of the men; who, accompanied by tap of drum,
and by the noise of many rattles, broke out into a war-song, in which
their own valor was by no means hidden in a bushel, or modestly refused
the light of day. After this came the more interesting ceremony of
a warrior "counting his coups." A young brave, with his face painted
black, mounted on a white horse mysteriously marked with red clay, and
naked to the breech-clout, holding in his hand a long taper lance, rode
into the circle, and paced slowly round it; then, flourishing his spear
on high, he darted to the scalp-pole, round which the warriors were
now seated in a semicircle; and in a loud voice, and with furious
gesticulations, related his exploits, the drums tapping at the
conclusion of each. On his spear hung seven scalps, and holding it
vertically above his head, and commencing with the top one, he told the
feats in which he had raised the trophy hair. When he had run through
these the drums tapped loudly, and several of the old chiefs shook their
rattles, in corroboration of the truth of his achievements. The brave,
swelling with pride, then pointed to the fresh and bloody scalps hanging
on the pole. Two of these had been torn from the heads of Rapahos struck
by his own hand, and this feat, _the_ exploit of the day, had entitled
him to the honor of counting his coups. Then, sticking his spear into
the ground by the side of the pole, he struck his hand twice on his
brawny and naked chest, turned short round, and, swift as the antelope,
galloped into the plain, as if overcome by the shock his modesty had
received in being obliged to recount his own high-sounding deeds.

"Wagh!" exclaimed old Killbuck, as he left the circle, pointing his
pipe-stem towards the fast-fading figure of the brave, "that Injun's
heart's about as big as ever it will be, I'm thinking."

With the Yutas, Killbuck and La Bonté remained during the winter; and
when the spring sun had opened the icebound creeks, and melted the
snow on the mountains, and its genial warmth had expanded the earth
and permitted the roots of the grass to "live" once more, and throw out
green and tender shoots, the two trappers bade adieu to the hospitable
Indians, who broke up their village in order to start for the valleys
of the Del Norte. As they followed the trail from the Bayou, at sundown,
just as they thought of camping, they observed ahead of them a solitary
horseman * riding along, followed by three mules. His hunting-frock of
fringed buckskin, and the rifle resting across the horn of his saddle,
at once proclaimed him white; but as he saw the mountaineers winding
through the canon, driving before them half-a-dozen horses, he judged
they might possibly be Indians and enemies, the more so as their dress
was not the usual costume of the whites. The trappers, therefore, saw
the stranger raise the rifle in the hollow of his arm, and gathering up
his horse, ride steadily to meet them, as soon as he observed they were
but two; two to one in mountain calculation being scarcely considered
odds, if red skin to white.

     * Evidently Ruxton himself. (Ed.)

However, on nearing them, the stranger discovered his mistake, and
throwing his rifle across the saddle once more reined in his horse and
waited their approach; for the spot where he then stood presented an
excellent camping-ground, with abundance of dry wood and convenient
water.

"Where from, stranger?"

"The divide, and to the Bayou for meat; and you are from there, I see.
Any buffalo come in yet?"

"Heap, and seal-fat at that. What's the sign out on the plains?"

"War-party of Rapahos passed Squirrel at sundown yesterday, and nearly
raised my animals. Sign, too, of more on left fork of Boiling Spring. No
buffalo between this and Bijou. Do you feel like camping?"

"_Well_, we do. But whar's your campan-yeros?"

"I'm alone."

"Alone? Wagh! how do you get your animals along?"

"I go ahead, and they follow the horse."

"Well, that beats all! That's a smart-looking hoss, now; and runs some,
I'm thinking."

"Well, it does."

"Whar's them mules from? They look like Californy."

"Mexican country--away down south."

"H----! Whar's yourself from?"

"There away, too."

"What's beaver worth in Taos?"

"Dollar."

"In Saint Louiy?"

"Same."

"H--! Any call for buckskin?"

"A heap! The soldiers in Santa Fé are half froze for leather; and
moccasins fetch two dollars easy."

"Wagh! How's trade on Arkansa, and what's doin' to the Fort?"

"Shians at Big Timber, and Bent's people trading smart. On North Fork,
Jim Waters got a hundred pack right off, and Sioux making more."

"Whar's Bill Williams?"

"Gone under, they say: the Diggers took his hair."

"How's powder goin'?"

"Two dollars a pint."

"Bacca?"

"A plew a plug."

"Got any about you?"

"Have _so_."

"Give us a chaw; and now let's camp."

Whilst unpacking their own animals, the two trappers could not refrain
from glancing, every now and then, with no little astonishment, at the
solitary stranger they had so unexpectedly encountered. If truth be
told, his appearance not a little perplexed them. His hunting-frock of
buckskin, shining with grease, and fringed pantaloons, over which the
well-greased butcher-knife had evidently been often wiped after cutting
his food or butchering the carcass of deer and buffalo, were of genuine
mountain-make. His face, clean shaved, exhibited, in its well-tanned and
weatherbeaten complexion, the effects of such natural cosmetics as sun
and wind; and under the mountain-hat of felt which covered his head,
long uncut hair hung in Indian fashion on his shoulders. All this would
have passed muster, had it not been for the most extraordinary equipment
of a double-barreled rifle, which, when it had attracted the eyes of the
mountaineers, elicited no little astonishment, not to say derision. But
perhaps nothing excited their admiration so much as the perfect docility
of the stranger's animals, which, almost like dogs, obeyed his voice
and call; and albeit that one, in a small sharp head and pointed ears,
expanded nostrils, and eye twinkling and malicious, exhibited the
personification of a lurking devil, yet they could not but admire
the perfect ease with which even this one, in common with the rest,
permitted herself to be handled.

Dismounting, and unhitching from the horn of his saddle the coil of
skin rope, one end of which was secured round the neck of the horse, he
proceeded to unsaddle; and whilst so engaged, the three mules, two of
which were packed, one with the unbutchered carcass of a deer, the other
with a pack of skins, &c., followed leisurely into the space chosen for
the camp, and, cropping the grass at their ease, waited until a whistle
called them to be unpacked.

The horse was a strong square-built bay; and although the severities of
a prolonged winter, with scanty pasture and long and trying travel, had
robbed his bones of fat and flesh, tucked up his flank, and "ewed" his
neck, still his clean and well-set legs, oblique shoulder, and withers
fine as a deer's, in spite of his gaunt half-starved appearance, bore
ample testimony as to what he _had_ been; while his clear cheerful eye,
and the hearty appetite with which he fell to work on the coarse grass
of the bottom, proved that he had something in him still, and was game
as ever. His tail, gnawed by the mules in days of strait, attracted the
observant mountaineers.

"Hard doin's when it come to that," remarked La Bonté.

Between the horse and two of the mules a mutual and great affection
appeared to subsist, which was no more than natural, when their master
observed to his companions that they had traveled together upwards of
two thousand miles.

One of these mules was a short, thick-set, stumpy animal, with an
enormous head surmounted by proportionable ears, and a pair of unusually
large eyes, beaming the most perfect good temper and docility (most
uncommon qualities in a mule). Her neck was thick, and rendered more so
in appearance by reason of her mane not being roached (or, in English,
hogged), which privilege she alone, enjoyed of the trio; and her short
strong legs, ending in small, round, cat-like hoofs, were feathered with
a profusion of dark-brown hair.

As she stood stock-still whilst the stranger removed the awkwardly
packed deer from her back, she flapped her huge ears backward and
forward, occasionally turning her head, and laying her cold nose against
her master's cheek. When the pack was removed he advanced to her head,
and resting it on his shoulder, rubbed her broad and grizzled cheeks
with both his hands for several minutes, the old mule laying her ears,
like a rabbit, back upon her neck, and with half-closed eyes enjoyed
mightily the manipulation. Then, giving her a smack upon the haunch,
and a "hep-a" well known to the mule kind, the old favorite threw up her
heels and cantered off to the horse, who was busily cropping the buffalo
grass on the bluff above the stream.

Great was the contrast between the one just described and the next
which came up to be divested of her pack. She, a tall beautifully-shaped
Mexican mule, of a light mouse color, with a head like a deer's, and
long springy legs, trotted up obedient to the call, but with ears bent
back and curled-up nose, and tail compressed between her legs. As her
pack was being removed, she groaned and whined like a dog as a thong or
loosened strap touched her ticklish body, lifting her hind quarters in
a succession of jumps or preparatory kicks, and looked wicked as a
panther. When nothing but the fore pack-saddle remained, she had worked
herself into the last stage; and as the stranger cast loose the girth of
buffalo-hide, and was about to lift the saddle and draw the crupper from
the tail, she drew her hind legs under her, more tightly compressed her
tail, and almost shrieked with rage.

"Stand clear," he roared (knowing what was coming), and raised the
saddle, when out went her hind legs, up went the pack into the air,
and, with it dangling at her heels, away she tore, kicking the offending
saddle as she ran. Her master, however, took this as matter of course,
followed her and brought back the saddle, which he piled on the others
to windward of the fire one of the trappers was kindling. Fire-making
is a simple process with the mountaineers. Their bullet-pouches always
contain a flint and steel, and sundry pieces of "punk" * or tinder; and
pulling a handful of dry grass, which they screw into a nest, they place
the lighted punk in this, and, closing the grass over it, wave it in the
air, when it soon ignites, and readily kindles the dry sticks forming
the foundation of the fire.

     * A pithy substance found in dead trees.

The tidbits of the deer the stranger had brought in were soon roasting
over the fire; whilst, as soon as the burning logs had deposited a
sufficiency of ashes, a hole was raked in them, and the head of the
deer, skin, hair, and all, placed in this primitive oven, and carefully
covered with the hot ashes.

A "heap" of fat meat in perspective, our mountaineers enjoyed their
anteprandial pipes, recounting the news of the respective regions whence
they came; and so well did they like each other's company, so sweet
was the honeydew tobacco of which the strange hunter had good store,
so plentiful the game about the creek, and so abundant the pasture for
their winter-starved animals, that before the carcass of the two-year
buck had been more than four-fifths consumed--and although rib after rib
had been picked and chucked over their shoulders to the wolves, and
one fore leg and _the_ "bit" of all, the head, were still cooked before
them--the three had come to the resolution to join company, and hunt
in their present locality for a few days at least--the owner of the
"two-shoot" gun volunteering to fill their horns with powder, and find
tobacco for their pipes.

Here, on plenty of meat, of venison, bear, and antelope, they merrily
luxuriated; returning after their daily hunts to the brightly-burning
campfire, where one always remained to guard the animals, and unloading
their packs of meat (all choicest portions), ate late into the
night, and, smoking, wiled away the time in narrating scenes in their
hard-spent lives, and fighting their battles o'er again.

The younger of the trappers, he who has figured under the name of La
Bonté, had excited, by scraps and patches from his history, no little
curiosity in the stranger's mind to learn the ups and downs of his
career; and one night, when they assembled earlier than usual at the
fire, he prevailed upon the modest trapper to "unpack" some passages in
his wild adventurous life.

"Maybe," commenced the mountaineer, "you both remember when old
Ashley went out with the biggest kind of band to trap the Columbia and
head-waters of Missoura and Yellow Stone. Well, that was the time this
nigger first felt like taking to the mountains."

This brings us back to the year of our Lord 1825; and perhaps it will be
as well, in order to render La Bonté's mountain language intelligible,
to translate it at once into tolerable English, and to tell in the third
person, but from his own lips, the scrapes which befell him in a sojourn
of more than twenty years in the Far West, and the causes that impelled
him to quit the comfort and civilization of his home, to seek the
perilous but engaging life of a trapper of the Rocky Mountains.

La Bonté * was raised in the state of Mississippi, not far from Memphis,
on the left bank of that huge and snag-filled river. His father was a
Saint Louis Frenchman, his mother a native of Tennessee. When a boy, our
trapper was "some," he said, with the rifle, and always had a hankering
for the West; particularly when, on accompanying his father to Saint
Louis every spring, he saw the different bands of traders and hunters
start upon their annual expeditions to the mountains. Greatly did he
envy the independent _insouciant_ trappers, as, in all the glory of
beads and buckskin, they shouldered their rifles at Jake Hawk-en's
door (the rifle-maker of Saint Louis), and bade adieu to the cares and
trammels of civilized life.

However, like a thoughtless beaver-kitten, he put his foot into a trap
one fine day, set by Mary Brand, ** a neighbor's daughter, and esteemed
"some punkins"--or, in other words, toasted as the beauty of the
county--by the susceptible Mississippians. From that moment he was "gone
beaver;" "he felt queer," he said, "all over, like a buffalo shot in the
lights; he had no relish for mush and molasses; hominy and johnny cakes
failed to excite his appetite. Deer and turkeys ran by him unscathed; he
didn't know, he said, whether his rifle had hind-sights or not. He felt
bad, that was a fact; but what ailed him he didn't know."

     * The name of this trapper is perpetuated in La Bonté Creek,
     which enters the Platte River 66 miles above the mouth of
     the Laramie, on the old Oregon trail. (Ed.)

     ** Mary Chase. See introduction to this volume. (Ed.)

Mary Brand--Mary Brand--Mary Brand! the old Dutch clock ticked it. Mary
Brand! his head throbbed it when he lay down to sleep. Mary Brand! his
riflelock spoke it plainly when he cocked it, to raise a shaking sight
at a deer. Mary Brand, Mary Brand! the whip-poor-will sang it instead
of her own well-known note; the bull-frogs croaked it in the swamp, and
mosquitoes droned it in his ear as he tossed about his bed at night,
wakeful, and striving to think what ailed him.

Who could that strapping young fellow who passed the door just now be
going to see? Mary Brand: Mary Brand. And who can big Pete Herring be
dressing that silver-fox skin so carefully for? For whom but Mary Brand?
And who is it that jokes and laughs and dances with all the "boys" but
him; and why?

Who but Mary Brand: and because the lovesick booby carefully avoids her.

"And Mary Brand herself--what is she like?"

"She's some now; that _is_ a fact, and the biggest kind of punkin at
that," would have been the answer from any man, woman, or child in the
county, and truly spoken too; always understanding that the pumpkin is
the fruit by which the _ne plus ultra_ of female perfection is expressed
amongst the figuratively-speaking westerns.

Being an American woman, of course she was tall, and straight and slim
as a hickory sapling, well, formed withal, with rounded bust, and neck
white and slender as the swan's. Her features were small, but finely
chiselled: and in this, it may be remarked, the lower orders of the
American woman differ from and far surpass the same class in England,
or elsewhere, where the features, although far prettier, are more vulgar
and commonplace. Mary Brand had the bright blue eye, thin nose, and
small but sweetly-formed mouth, the too fair complexion and dark-brown
hair, which characterize the beauty of the Anglo-American, the heavy
masses (hardly curls) that fell over her face and neck contrasting with
her polished whiteness. Such was Mary Brand; and when to her good looks
are added a sweet disposition and all the best qualities of a thrifty
housewife, it must be allowed that she fully justified the eulogiums of
the good people of Memphis.

Well, to cut a love-story short, in doing which not a little moral
courage is shown, young La Bonté fell desperately in love with the
pretty Mary, and she with him; and small blame to her, for he was a
proper lad of twenty--six feet in his moccasins--the best hunter and
rifle-shot in the country, with many other advantages too numerous to
mention. But when did the course, &c., e'er run smooth? When the affair
had become a recognized "courting" (and Americans alone know the horrors
of such prolonged purgatory), they became, to use La Bonté's words,
"awful fond," and consequently about once a-week had their tiffs and
make-ups.

However, on one occasion, at a husking, and during one of these tiffs,
Mary, every inch a woman, to gratify some indescribable feeling, brought
to her aid jealousy--that old serpent who has caused such mischief in
this world; and by a flirtation over the corn-cobs with big Pete, La
Bonté's former and only rival, struck so hard a blow at the latter's
heart, that on the moment his brain caught fire, blood danced before his
eyes, and he became like one possessed. Pete observed and enjoyed his
struggling emotion--better for him had he minded his corn-shelling
alone;--and the more to annoy his rival, paid the most sedulous
attention to pretty Mary.

Young La Bonté stood it as long as human nature, at boiling heat,
could endure; but when Pete, in the exultation of his apparent triumph,
crowned his success by encircling the slender waist of the girl with his
arm, and snatching a sudden kiss, he jumped upright from his seat,
and seizing a small whiskey-keg which stood in the center of the
corn-shellers, he hurled it at his rival, and crying to him, hoarse with
passion, "to follow if he was a man," he left the house.

At that time, and even now, in the remoter States of the western
country, rifles settled even the most trivial differences between the
hot-blooded youths; and of such frequent occurrence and invariably
bloody termination did these encounters become, that they scarcely
produced sufficient excitement to draw together half-a-dozen spectators.

In the present case, however, so public was the quarrel and so well
known the parties concerned, that not only the people who had witnessed
the affair, but all the neighborhood, thronged to the scene of action,
in a large field in front of the house, where the preliminaries of a
duel between Pete and La Bonté were being arranged by their respective
friends.

Mary, when she discovered the mischief her thoughtlessness was likely to
occasion, was almost beside herself with grief, but she knew how vain it
would be to attempt to interfere. The poor girl, who was most ardently
attached to La Bonté, was carried swooning into the house, where all the
women congregated, and were locked in by old Brand, who, himself an old
pioneer, thought but little of bloodshed, but refused to let the women
folk witness the affray.

Preliminaries arranged, the combatants took up their respective
positions at either end of a space marked for the purpose, at forty
paces from each other. They were both armed with heavy rifles, and
had the usual hunting pouches, containing ammunition, hanging over the
shoulder. Standing with the butts of their rifles on the ground, they
confronted each other; and the crowd, drawing away a few paces only
on each side, left one man to give the word. This was the single word
"fire;" and after this signal was given, the combatants were at liberty
to fire away until one or the other dropped.

At the word, both the men quickly raised their rifles to the shoulder;
and whilst the sharp cracks instantaneously rang, they were seen to
flinch, as either felt the pinging sensation of a bullet entering
his flesh. Regarding each other steadily for a few moments, the blood
running down La Bonté's neck from a wound under the left jaw, whilst his
opponent was seen to place his hand once to his right breast, as if to
feel the position of his wound, they commenced reloading their rifles.
But as Pete was in the act of forcing down the ball with his long
hickory wiping-stick, he suddenly dropped his right arm--the rifle
slipped from his grasp--and, reeling for a moment like a drunken man, he
fell dead to the ground.

Even here, however, there was law of some kind or another; and the
consequences of the duel were, that the constables were soon on the
trail of La Bonté to arrest him. He easily avoided them; and, taking to
the woods, lived for several days in as wild a state as the beasts he
hunted and killed for his support.

Tired of this, he at last resolved to quit the country and betake
himself to the mountains, for which life he had ever felt an
inclination.

When, therefore, he thought the officers of justice had grown slack
in their search of him, and that the coast was comparatively clear, he
determined to start on his distant expedition to the Far West.

Once more, before he carried his project into execution, he sought and
obtained a last interview with Mary Brand.

"Mary," said he, "I'm about to break. They're hunting me like a fall
buck, and I'm bound to quit. Don't think any more about me, for I shall
never come back."

Poor Mary burst into tears, and bent her head on the table near which
she sat. When she again raised it, she saw La Bonté, his long rifle upon
his shoulder, striding with rapid steps from the house. Year after year
rolled on, and he did not return.




CHAPTER III

|A FEW days after his departure, La Bonté found himself at St. Louis,
the emporium of the fur-trade, and the fast-rising metropolis of the
precocious settlements of the West. Here, a prey to the agony of mind
which jealousy, remorse, and blighted love mix into a very puchero of
misery, he got into the company of certain rowdies, a class that every
western city particularly abounds in; and anxious to drown his sorrows
in any way, and quite unscrupulous as to the means, he plunged into all
the vicious excitements of drinking, gambling, and fighting, which form
the every-day amusements of the ris-. ing generation of St. Louis.

Perhaps in no other part of the United States--where, indeed, humanity
is frequently to be seen in many curious and unusual phases--is there
a population so marked in its general character, and at the same time
divided into such distinct classes, as in the above-named city. Dating,
as it does, its foundation from yesterday, *--for what are forty years
in the growth of a metropolis?--its founders are now scarcely past
middle life, regarding with astonishment the growing works of their
hands; and whilst gazing upon its busy quays, piled with grain and other
produce of the West, its fleets of huge steamboats lying tier upon tier
alongside the wharves, its well-stored warehouses, and all the bustling
concomitants of a great commercial depot, they can scarcely realize the
memory of a few short years, when on the same spot nothing was to be
seen but the miserable hovels of a French village--the only sign of
commerce being the unwieldy bateaux of the Indian traders, laden with
peltries from the distant regions of the Platte and Upper Missouri.

     * He means as an American city. St. Louis was founded by the
     French in 1764; transferred to the United States in 1804.
     (Ed.) 1804. (Ed.)

Where now intelligent and wealthy merchants walk erect, in conscious
substantiality of purse and credit, and direct the commerce of a vast
and well-peopled region, there stalked but the other day, in dress of
buckskin, the Indian trader of the West; and all the evidences of life,
mayhap, consisted of the eccentric vagaries of the different bands of
trappers and hardy mountaineers who accompanied, some for pleasure
and some as escort, the periodically arriving bateaux, laden with
the beaver-skins and buffalo-robes collected during the season at the
different trading-posts in the Far West. *

     * Written in 1848. (Ed.)

These, nevertheless, were the men whose hardy enterprise opened to
commerce and the plow the vast and fertile regions of the West. Rough
and savage though they were, they were the true pioneers of that
extraordinary tide of civilization which has poured its resistless
current through tracts large enough for kings to govern, over a country
now teeming with cultivation, where, a few short years ago, countless
herds of buffalo roamed unmolested, where the bear and deer abounded,
and the savage Indian skulked through the woods and prairies, lord of
the unappreciated soil that now yields its prolific treasures to the
spade and plow of civilized man. To the wild and half-savage trapper,
who may be said to exemplify the energy, enterprise, and hardihood
characteristic of the American people, divested of all the false and
vicious glare with which a high state of civilization, too rapidly
attained, has obscured their real and genuine character, in which the
above traits are eminently prominent--to these men alone is due the
empire of the West, destined in a few short years to become the most
important of those confederated States composing the mighty Union of
North America.

Sprung, then, out of the wild and adventurous fur-trade, St. Louis,
still the emporium of that species of commerce, preserves even now,
in the character of its population, many of the marked peculiarities
distinguishing its early founders, who were identified with the
primitive Indian in hardihood and instinctive wisdom. Whilst the French
portion of the population retain the thoughtless levity and frivolous
disposition of their original source, the Americans of St. Louis, who
may lay claim to be native, as it were, are as strongly distinguished
for determination and energy of character as they are for physical
strength and animal courage; and are remarkable, at the same time, for
a singular aptitude in carrying out commercial enterprises to successful
terminations, apparently incompatible with the thirst of adventure and
excitement which forms so prominent a feature in their character. In St.
Louis and with her merchants have originated many commercial enterprises
of gigantic speculation, not confined to the immediate locality or to
the distant Indian fur-trade, but embracing all parts of the continent,
and even a portion of the Old World. And here it must be remembered that
St. Louis is situated inland, at a distance of upwards of one thousand
miles from the sea.

Besides her merchants and upper class, who form a little aristocracy
even here, a large portion of her population, still connected with
the Indian and fur trade, preserve all their original characteristics,
unacted upon by the influence of advancing civilization. There is,
moreover, a large floating population of foreigners of all nations, who
must possess no little amount of enterprise to be tempted to this spot,
whence they spread over the remote western tracts, still infested by
the savage; so that, if any of their blood is infused into the native
population, the characteristic energy and enterprise is increased, and
not tempered down by the foreign cross.

But perhaps the most singular of the casual population are the
mountaineers, who, after several seasons spent in trapping, and with
good store of dollars, arrive from the scene of their adventures, wild
as savages, determined to enjoy themselves, for a time, in all the
gayety and dissipation of the western city. In one of the back streets
of the town is a tavern well known as the Rocky-Mountain House; and
hither the trappers resort, drinking and fighting as long as their money
lasts, which, as they are generous and lavish as Jack Tars, is for a
few days only. Such scenes, both tragic and comic, as are enacted in the
Rocky-Mountain House, are beyond the powers of pen to describe; and when
a fandango is in progress, to which congregate the coquettish belles
from "Vide Poche," * as the French portion of the suburb is nicknamed,
the grotesque endeavors of the bear-like mountaineers to sport a figure
on the light fantastic toe, and their insertions into the dance of the
mystic jumps of Terpsichorean Indians when engaged in the "medicine"
dances in honor of bear, of buffalo, or ravished scalp, are such
startling innovations on the choreographic art as would make the shade
of Gallini quake and gibber in his pumps.

     * Empty Pocket: A humorous nickname that the old French
     bestowed upon Carondelet. (Ed.)

Passing the open doors and windows of the Mountain House, the stranger
stops short as the sounds of violin and banjo twang upon his ears,
accompanied by extraordinary noises--sounding unearthly to the greenhorn
listener, but recognized by the initiated as an Indian song roared out
of the stentorian lungs of a mountaineer, who, patting his stomach
with open hands to improve the necessary shake, choruses the well-known
Indian chant:--

               Hi--Hi--Hi--Hi

                   Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i--Hi-i

               Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya

                   Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya--hi-ya

               Hi-ya--hi-ya--hi--hi,

                   &c., &c., &c.

and polishes off the high notes with a whoop which makes the old wooden
houses shake again, as it rattles and echoes down the street.

Here, over fiery "monaghahela," Jean Batiste, the sallow half-breed
voyageur from the North--and who, deserting the service of the
"North West" (the Hudson's Bay Company), has come down the
Mississippi, from the "Falls," to try the sweets and liberty of "free"
trapping--hobnobs with a stalwart leather-clad "boy," just returned
from trapping on the waters of Grand River, on the western side the
mountains, who interlards his mountain jargon with Spanish words picked
up in Taos and California. In one corner a trapper, lean and gaunt from
the starving regions of the Yellow Stone, has just recognized an old
campanyero, with whom he hunted years before in the perilous country of
the Blackfeet.

"Why, John, old hoss, how do you come on?"

"What! Meek, old coon! I thought you were under?"

One from Arkansa stalks into the center of the room, with a pack
of cards in his hand and a handful of dollars in his hat. Squatting
crosslegged on a buffalo-robe, he smacks down the money and cries out
"Ho, boys! hyar's a deck, and hyar's the beaver" (rattling the coin);
"who dar set his hoss? Wagh!"

Tough are the yarns of wondrous hunts and Indian perils, of
hairbreadth'scapes and curious "fixes." Transcendent are the qualities
of sundry rifles which call these hunters masters; "plum" is the
"center" each vaunted barrel shoots; sufficing for a hundred wigs is the
"hair" each hunter has "lifted" from Indians' scalps; multitudinous the
"coups" he has "struck." As they drink so do they brag, first of their
guns, their horses, and their squaws, and lastly of themselves: and when
it comes to that, "ware steel." La Bonté, on his arrival at St. Louis,
found himself one day in no less a place than this; and here he made
acquaintance with an old trapper about to start for the mountains in
a few days, to hunt on the head-waters of Platte and Green River. With
this man he resolved to start, and, having still some hundred dollars in
cash, he immediately set about equipping himself for the expedition.
To effect this, he first of all visited the gun-store of Hawken, whose
rifles are renowned in the mountains, and exchanged his own piece, which
was of very small bore, for a regular mountain rifle. This was of very
heavy metal, carrying about thirty-two balls to the pound, stocked to
the muzzle, and mounted with brass; its only ornament being a buffalo
bull, looking exceedingly ferocious, which was not very artistically
engraved upon the trap in the stock. Here, too, he laid in a few pounds
of powder and lead, and all the necessaries for a long hunt.

His next visit was to a smith's store, which smith was black by trade
and black by nature, for he was a nigger, and, moreover, celebrated
as being the best maker of beaver-traps in St. Louis; and of him he
purchased six new traps, paying for the same twenty dollars--procuring,
at the same time, an old trap-sack made of stout buffalo-skin in which
to carry them.

We next find La Bonté and his companion--one Luke, better known as
Gouge-Eye, one of his eyes having been "gouged" in a mountain fray--at
Independence, a little town situated on the Missouri, several hundred
miles above St. Louis, and within a short distance of the Indian
frontier.

Independence may be termed the prairie port of the western country. Here
the caravans destined for Santa Fé, and the interior of Mexico, assemble
to complete their necessary equipment. Mules and oxen are purchased,
teamsters hired, and all stores and outfit laid in here for the long
journey over the wide expanse of prairie ocean. Here, too, the Indian
traders and the Rocky-Mountain trappers rendezvous, collecting in
sufficient force to insure their safe passage through the Indian
country. At the seasons of departure and arrival of these bands, the
little town presents a lively scene of bustle and confusion. The wild
and dissipated mountaineers get rid of their last dollars in furious
orgies, treating all comers to galore of drink, and pledging each other,
in horns of potent whisky, to successful hunts and "heaps of beaver."
When every cent has disappeared from their pouches, the free trapper
often makes away with rifle, traps, and animals, to gratify his "dry"
(for-your mountaineer is never "thirsty"); and then, "hoss and beaver"
gone, is necessitated to hire himself to one of the leaders of big
bands, and hypothecate his services for an equipment of traps and
animals. Thus La Bonté picked up three excellent mules for a mere song,
with their accompanying pack-saddles, _apishamores_, * and lariats, and
the next day, with Luke, "put out" for Platte.

     * Saddle-blanket made of buffalo-calf skin.

As they passed through the rendezvous, which was encamped on a little
stream beyond the town, even our young Mississippian was struck with
the novelty of the scene. Upwards of forty huge wagons, of Conestoga and
Pittsburgh build, and covered with snow-white tilts, were ranged in a
semicircle, or rather a horse-shoe form, on the flat open prairie, their
long tongues (poles) pointing outwards; with the necessary harness for
four pairs of mules, or eight yoke of oxen, lying on the ground beside
them, spread in ready order for hitching up. Round the wagons groups
of teamsters, tall, stalwart, young Missourians, were engaged in busy
preparation for the start, greasing the wheels, fitting or repairing
harness, smoothing ox-bows or overhauling their own moderate kits
or "possibles." They were all dressed in the same fashion: a pair of
homespun pantaloons, tucked into thick boots reaching nearly to the
knee, and confined round the waist by a broad leathern belt, which
supported a strong butcher-knife in a sheath. A coarse checked shirt was
their only other covering, with a fur cap on the head.

Numerous camp-fires surrounded the wagons, and near them lounged
wild-looking mountaineers, easily distinguished from the "greenhorn"
teamsters by their dresses of buckskin and their weather-beaten faces.
Without an exception, these were under the influence of the rosy god;
and one, who sat, the picture of misery, at a fire by himself--staring
into the blaze with vacant countenance, his long matted hair hanging
in unkempt masses over his face, begrimed with the dirt of a week, and
pallid with the effects of ardent drink--was suffering from the usual
consequences of having "kept it up" beyond the usual point, paying the
penalty in a fit of "horrors"--as _delirium tremens_ is most aptly
termed by sailors and the unprofessional.

In another part, the merchants of the caravan and the Indian traders
superintended the lading of the wagons or mule-packs. They were dressed
in civilized attire, and some were even bedizened in St. Louis or
eastern city dandyism, to the infinite disgust of the mountain men, who
look upon a "bourge-way" (bourgeois) with most undisguised contempt,
despising the very simplest forms of civilization. The picturesque
appearance of the encampment was not a little heightened by the addition
of several Indians from the neighboring Shawnee settlement, who, mounted
on their small active horses, on which they reclined rather than sat in
negligent attitudes, quietly looked on at the novel scene, indifferent
to the chaff in which the thoughtless teamsters indulged at their
expense. Numbers of mules and horses were picketed at hand, whilst a
large herd of noble oxen were being driven towards the camp--the _wo-ha_
of the teamsters sounding far and near, as they collected the scattered
beasts in order to yoke up.

As most of the mountain-men were utterly unable to move from camp, Luke
and La Bonté, with three or four of the most sober, started in company,
intending to wait on Blue, a stream which runs into the Caw or Kanzas
River, until the "balance" of the band came up. Mounting their mules,
and leading the loose animals, they struck at once into the park-like
prairie, and were speedily out of sight of civilization.

It was the latter end of May, towards the close of the season of heavy
rains, which in early spring render the climate of this country almost
intolerable, at the same time that they fertilize and thaw the soil,
so long bound up by the winter's frosts. The grass was everywhere
luxuriantly green, and gaudy flowers dotted the surface of the prairie.
This term, however, should hardly be applied to the beautiful undulating
scenery of this park-like country. Unlike the flat monotony of the Grand
Plains, here well-wooded uplands, clothed with forest-trees of every
species, and picturesque dells, through which run clear bubbling streams
belted with gay-blossomed shrubs, everywhere present themselves; whilst
on the level meadow-land, topes of trees with spreading foliage afford
a shelter to the game and cattle, and well-timbered knolls rise at
intervals from the plain.

Many clear streams dashing over their pebbly beds intersect the country,
from which, in the noonday's heat, the red-deer jump, shaking their wet
sides as the noise of approaching man disturbs them; and booming grouse
rise from the tall luxuriant herbage at every step. Where the deep
escarpments of the river-banks exhibit the section of the earth, a rich
alluvial soil of surpassing depth courts the cultivation of civilized
man; and in every feature it is evident that here nature has worked with
kindliest and most bountiful hand.

For hundreds of miles along the western or right bank of the Missouri
does a country extend, with which, for fertility and natural resources,
no part of Europe can stand comparison. Sufficiently large to contain an
enormous population, it has, besides, every advantage of position, and
all the natural capabilities which should make it the happy abode of
civilized man. Through this unpeopled country the United States pours
her greedy thousands, to seize upon the barren territories of her feeble
neighbor.

Camping the first night on Black Jack, our mountaineers here cut each
man a spare hickory wiping-stick for his rifle; and La Bonté, who was
the only greenhorn of the party, witnessed a savage ebullition of rage
on the part of one of his companions, exhibiting the perfect unrestraint
which these men impose upon their passions, and the barbarous anger
which the slightest opposition to their will excites. One of the
trappers, on arriving at the camping-place, dismounted from his horse,
and, after divesting it of the saddle, endeavored to lead his mule by
the rope up to the spot where he wished to deposit his pack. Mulelike,
however, the more he pulled the more stubbornly she remained in her
tracks, planting her fore legs firmly, and stretching out her neck with
provoking obstinacy. Truth to tell, it does require the temper of
a thousand Jobs to manage a mule; and in no case does the willful
mulishness of the animal stir up one's choler more than in the very
trick this one played, and which is a daily occurrence. After tugging
ineffectually for several minutes, winding the rope round his body, and
throwing himself suddenly forward with all his strength, the trapper
actually foamed with passion; and although he might have subdued the
animal at once by fastening the rope with a halfhitch round its nose,
this, with an obstinacy equal to that of the mule itself, he refused to
attempt, preferring to vanquish her by main strength. Failing so to do,
the mountaineer, with a volley of blasphemous imprecations, suddenly
seized his rifle, and, leveling it at the mule's head, shot her dead.

Passing the Wa-ka-rasha, * a well-timbered stream, they met a band of
Osages going "to buffalo." These Indians, in common with some tribes
of the Pawnees, shave the head, with the exception of a ridge from the
forehead to the center of the scalp, which is roached or hogged like
the mane of a mule, and stands erect, plastered with unguents, and
ornamented with feathers of the hawk and turkey. The naked scalp is
often painted in mosaic with black and red, the face with shining
vermilion. This band were all naked to the breech-clout, the warmth
of the sun having made them throw their dirty blankets from their
shoulders. These Indians not unfrequently levy contributions on the
strangers they accidentally meet; but they easily distinguish the
determined mountaineer from the incautious greenhorn, and think it
better to let the former alone.

     * Wakarusa. (Ed.)

Crossing Vermilion, the trappers arrived on the fifth day at Blue, where
they encamped in the broad timber belting the creek, and there awaited
the arrival of the remainder of the party.

It was two days before they came up; but the following day they started
for the mountains, fourteen in number, striking a trail which follows
the Big Blue in its course through the prairies, which, as they advanced
to the westward, gradually smoothed away into a vast unbroken expanse of
rolling plain. Herds of antelope began to show themselves, and some
of the hunters, leaving the trail, soon returned with plenty of their
tender meat. The luxuriant but coarse grass they had hitherto seen now
changed into the nutritious and curly buffalo grass, and their animals
soon improved in appearance on the excellent pasture. In a few days,
without any adventure, they struck the Platte River, its shallow waters
(from which it derives its name) spreading over a wide and sandy
bed, numerous sand-bars obstructing the sluggish current, nowhere
sufficiently deep to wet the forder's knee.

By this time, but few antelope having been seen, the party ran entirely
out of meat; and one whole day and part of another having passed without
so much as a stray rabbit presenting itself, not a few objurgations on
the buffalo grumbled from the lips of the hunters, who expected ere
this to have reached the land of plenty. La Bonté killed a fine deer,
however, in the river bottom, after they had encamped, not one particle
of which remained after supper that night, but which hardly took the
rough edge off their keen appetites. Although already in the buffalo
range, no traces of these animals had yet been seen-; and as the country
afforded but little game, and the party did not care to halt and lose
time in hunting for it, they moved along hungry and sulky, the theme of
conversation being the well-remembered merits of good buffalo-meat,--
of fat fleece, hump-rib, and tenderloin; of delicious "boudins," and
marrowbones too good to think of. La Bonté had never seen the lordly
animal, and consequently but half believed the accounts of the
mountaineers, who described their countless bands as covering the
prairie far as the eye could reach, and requiring days of travel to pass
through; but the visions of such dainty and abundant feeding as they
descanted on set his mouth watering, and danced before his eyes as he
slept supperless, night after night, on the banks of the hungry Platte.

One morning he had packed his animals before the rest, and was riding a
mile in advance of the party, when he saw on one side the trail, looming
in the refracted glare which mirages the plains, three large dark
objects without shape or form, which rose and fell in the exaggerated
light like ships at sea. Doubting what it could be, he approached the
strange objects; and as the refraction disappeared before him, the dark
masses assumed a more distinct form, and clearly moved with life. A
little nearer, and he made them out: they were buffalo. Thinking to
distinguish himself, the greenhorn dismounted from his mule and quickly
hobbled her, throwing his lasso on the ground to trail behind when
he wished to catch her. Then, rifle in hand, he approached the huge
animals, and, being a good hunter, knew well to take advantage of the
inequalities of the ground and face the wind; by which means he crawled
at length to within forty yards of the buffalo, which quietly cropped
the grass, unconscious of danger. Now, for the first time, he gazed upon
the noble beast he had so often heard of and longed to see.

With coal-black beard sweeping the ground as he fed, an enormous bull
was in advance of the others, his wild brilliant eyes peering from an
immense mass of shaggy hair, which covered his neck and shoulder. From
this point his skin was smooth as one's hand, a sleek and shining dun,
and his ribs were well covered with shaking flesh. Whilst leisurely
cropping the short curly grass, he occasionally lifted his tail into the
air, and stamped his foot as a fly or mosquito annoyed him--flapping
the intruder with his tail, or snatching at the itching part with his
ponderous head.

When La Bonté had sufficiently admired the buffalo, he lifted his rifle,
and, taking steady aim, and certain of his mark, pulled the trigger,
expecting to see the huge beast fall over at the report. What was his
surprise and consternation, however, to see the animal only flinch
when the ball struck him, and then gallop off, followed by the others,
apparently unhurt. As is generally the case with greenhorns, he had
fired too high, ignorant that the only certain spot to strike a buffalo
is but a few inches above the brisket, and that a higher shot is rarely
fatal. When he rose from the ground he saw all the party halting in full
view of his discomfiture; and when he joined them, loud were the laughs,
and deep the regrets of the hungry at his first attempt.

However, they now knew that they were in the country of meat; and a few
miles farther, another band of stragglers presenting themselves, three
of the hunters went in pursuit, La Bonté taking a mule to pack in the
meat. He soon saw them crawling towards the band, and shortly two puffs
of smoke, and the sharp cracks of their rifles, showed that they had got
within shot; and when he rode up, two fine buffaloes were stretched upon
the ground. Now, for the first time, he was initiated in the mysteries
of butchering. He watched the hunters as they turned the carcass on the
belly, stretching out the legs to support it on each side. A transverse
cut was then made at the nape of the neck, and, gathering the long hair
of the boss in one hand, the skin was separated from the shoulder. It
was then laid open from this point to the tail, along the spine, and
then, freed from the sides and pulled down to the brisket, but still
attached to it, was stretched upon the ground to receive the dissected
portions. Then the shoulder was severed, the fleece removed from along
the backbone, and the hump-ribs cut off with a tomahawk. All this was
placed upon the skin; and after the "boudins" had been withdrawn from
the stomach, and the tongue--a great dainty--taken from the head, the
meat was packed upon the mule, and the whole party hurried to camp
rejoicing.

There was merry-making in the camp that night, and the way they indulged
their appetites--or, in their own language, "throwed" the meat "cold"--
would have made the heart of a dyspeptic leap for joy or burst with
envy. Far into the "still watches of the tranquil night," the fat-clad
"dépouillé" saw its fleshy mass grow small by degrees and beautifully
less before the trenchant blades of the hungry mountaineers; appetizing
yards of well-browned "boudin" slipped glibly down their throats; rib
after rib of tender hump was picked and flung to the wolves; and when
human nature, with helpless gratitude, and confident that nothing of
superexcellent comestibility remained, was lazily wiping the greasy
knife that had done such good service, a skillful hunter was seen to
chuckle to himself as he raked the deep ashes of the fire, and drew
therefrom a pair of tongues so admirably baked, so soft, so sweet, and
of such exquisite flavor, that a veil is considerately drawn over the
effects their discussion produced in the mind of our greenhorn La
Bonté, and the raptures they excited in the bosom of that, as yet,
most ignorant mountaineer. Still, as he ate he wondered, and wondering
admired, that nature, in giving him such profound gastronomic powers,
and such transcendent capabilities of digestion, had yet bountifully
provided an edible so peculiarly adapted to his ostrich-like appetite,
that after consuming nearly his own weight in rich and fat buffalo-meat,
he felt as easy and as little incommoded as if he had lightly supped on
strawberries and cream.

Sweet was the digestive pipe after such a feast; soft was the sleep and
deep, which sealed the eyes of the contented trappers that night. It
felt like the old thing, they said, to be once more amongst the "meat";
and, as they were drawing near the dangerous portion of the trail, they
felt at home; although they now could never be confident, when they lay
down at night upon their buffalo-robes, of awaking again in this life,
knowing, as they did, full well, that savage men lurked near, thirsting
for their blood.

However, no enemies showed themselves as yet, and they proceeded quietly
up the river, vast herds of buffaloes darkening the plains around them,
affording them more than abundance of the choicest meat; but, to their
credit be it spoken, no more was killed than was absolutely required
--unlike the cruel slaughter made by most of the white travelers across
the plains, who wantonly destroy these noble animals, not even for the
excitement of sport, but in cold-blooded and insane butchery. La Bonté
had practice enough to perfect him in the art, and, before the buffalo
range was passed, he was ranked as a first-rate hunter.

One evening he had left the camp for meat, and was approaching a band
of cows for that purpose, crawling towards them along the bed of a dry
hollow in the prairie, when he observed them suddenly jump towards him,
and immediately afterwards a score of mounted Indians appeared, whom,
by their dress, he at once knew to be Pawnees and enemies. Thinking
they might not discover him, he crouched down in the ravine; but a
noise behind caused him to turn his head, and he saw some five or six
advancing up the bed of the dry creek, whilst several more were riding
on the bluffs. The cunning savages had cut off his retreat to his mule,
which he saw in the possession of one of them. His presence of mind,
however, did not desert him; and seeing at once that to remain where he
was would be like being caught in a trap (as the Indians could advance
to the edge of the bluff and shoot him from above), he made for the open
prairie, determined at least to sell his scalp dearly, and make a good
fight. With a yell the Indians charged, but halted when they saw
the sturdy trapper deliberately kneel, and, resting his rifle on the
wiping-stick, take a steady aim as they advanced. Full well the Pawnees
know, to their cost, that a mountaineer seldom pulls his trigger without
sending a bullet to the mark; and, certain that one at least must fall,
they hesitated to make the onslaught. Steadily the white retreated with
his face to the foe, bringing the rifle to his shoulder the instant that
one advanced within shot, the Indians galloping round, firing the few
guns they had amongst them at long distances, but without effect. One
young brave, more daring than the rest, rode out of the crowd, and
dashed at the hunter, throwing himself, as he passed within a few yards,
from the saddle, and hanging over the opposite side of his horse, thus
presenting no other mark than his left foot. As he crossed La Bonté, he
discharged his bow from under his horse's neck, and with such good
aim, that the arrow, whizzing through the air, struck the stock of the
hunter's rifle, which was at his shoulder, and, glancing off, pierced
his arm, inflicting, luckily, but a slight wound. Again the Indian
turned in his course, the others encouraging him with loud war-whoops,
and once more, passing at still less distance, he drew his arrow to
the head. This time, however, the eagle eye of the white detected the
action, and suddenly rising from his knee as the Indian approached
(hanging by his foot alone over the opposite side of the horse), he
jumped towards the animal with outstretched arms and a loud yell,
causing it to start suddenly, and swerve from its course. The Indian
lost his foot-hold, and, after a fruitless struggle to regain his
position, fell to the ground; but instantly rose upon his feet and
gallantly confronted the mountaineer, striking his hand upon his brawny
chest and shouting a loud whoop of defiance. In another instant the
rifle of La Bonté had poured forth its contents; and the brave savage,
springing into the air, fell dead to the ground, just as the other
trappers, who had heard the firing, galloped up to the spot. At sight
of them the Pawnees, with yells of disappointed vengeance, hastily
retreated.

That night La Bonté first lifted hair!

A few days after, the mountaineers reached the point where the Platte
divides into two great forks: the northern one, stretching to the
north-west, skirts the eastern base of the Black Hills, and, sweeping
round to the south, rises in the vicinity of the mountain valley called
the New Park, receiving the Laramie, Medicine Bow, and Sweetwater
creeks. The other, or South Fork, strikes towards the mountains in a
south-westerly direction, hugging the base of the main chain of the
Rocky Mountains; and, fed by several small creeks, rises in the uplands
of the Bayou Salade, near which is also the source of the Arkansa. To
the forks of the Platte the valley of that river extends from three
to five miles on each side, inclosed by steep sandy bluffs, from the
summits of which the prairies stretch away in broad undulating expanse
to the north and south. The bottom, as it is termed, is but thinly
covered with timber, the cotton woods being scattered only here and
there; but some of the islands in the broad bed of the stream are well
wooded, leading to the inference that the trees on the banks have been
felled by Indians who formerly frequented the neighborhood of this river
as a chosen hunting-ground. As, during the long winters, the pasture in
the vicinity is scarce and withered, the Indians feed their horses on
the bark of the sweet cotton wood, upon which they subsist, and even
fatten. Thus, wherever a village has encamped, the trunks of these trees
strew the ground, their upper limbs and smaller branches peeled of their
bark, and looking as white and smooth as if scraped with a knife.

On the forks, however, the timber is heavier and of greater variety,
some of the creeks being well wooded with ash and cherry, which break
the monotony of the everlasting cotton wood.

Dense masses of buffalo still continued to darken the plains, and
numerous bands of wolves hovered round the outskirts of the vast herds,
singling out the sick and wounded animals, and preying upon such calves
as the rifles and arrows of the hunters had bereaved of their mothers.
The white wolf is the invariable attendant upon the buffalo; and when
one of these persevering animals is seen, it is a certain sign that
buffalo are not far distant. Besides the buffalo wolf, there are four
distinct varieties common to the plains, and all more or less attendant
upon the buffalo. These are, the black, the gray, the brown, and,
last and least, the _coyote or cayeute_ of the mountaineers, the
_wachunkamànet_, or "medicine wolf" of the Indians, who hold the latter
animal in reverential awe. This little wolf, whose fur is of great
thickness and beauty, is of diminutive size, but wonderfully sagacious,
making up by cunning what it wants in physical strength. In bands of
from three to thirty they not unfrequently station themselves along
the "runs" of the deer and the antelope, extending their line for many
miles; and the quarry being started, each wolf follows in pursuit until
tired, when it relinquishes the chase to another relay, following slowly
after until the animal is fairly run down, when all hurry to the spot
and speedily consume the carcass. The cayeute, however, is often made a
tool of by his larger brethren, unless, indeed, he acts from motives of
spontaneous charity. When a hunter has slaughtered game, and is in
the act of butchering it, these little wolves sit patiently at a short
distance from the scene of operations, while at a more respectful one
the larger wolves (the white or gray) lope hungrily around, licking
their chops in hungry expectation. Not unfrequently the hunter throws
a piece of meat towards the smaller one, who seizes it immediately, and
runs off with the morsel in his mouth. Before he gets many yards
with his prize, the large wolf pounces with a growl upon him, and the
cayeute, dropping the meat, returns to his former position, and will
continue his charitable act as long as the hunter pleases to supply him.

Wolves are so common on the plains and in the mountains, that the hunter
never cares to throw away a charge of ammunition upon them, although the
ravenous animals are a constant source of annoyance to him, creeping
to the camp-fire at night, and gnawing his saddles and _apishamores_,
eating the skin ropes which secure the horses and mules to their
pickets, and even their very hobbles, and not unfrequently killing or
entirely disabling the animals themselves.

Round the camp, during the night, the cayeute keeps unremitting watch,
and the traveler not unfrequently starts from his bed with affright, as
the mournful and unearthly chiding of the wolf breaks suddenly upon his
ear: the long-drawn howl being taken up by others of the band, until
it dies away in the distance, or some straggler passing within hearing
answers to the note, and howls as he lopes away.

Our party crossed the south fork about ten miles from its juncture with
the main stream, and then, passing the prairie, struck the north fork a
day's travel from the other. At the mouth of an ash-timbered creek they
came upon Indian "sign," and as now they were in the vicinity of the
treacherous Sioux, they moved along with additional caution, Frapp and
Gonneville, two experienced mountaineers, always heading the advance.

About noon they had crossed over to the left bank of the fork, intending
to camp on a large creek where some fresh beaver sign had attracted the
attention of some of the trappers; and as, on further examination, it
appeared that two or three lodges of that animal were not far distant,
it was determined to remain here a day or two, and set their traps.

Gonneville, old Luke, and La Bonté, had started up the creek, and were
carefully examining the banks for sign, when the former, who was in
front, suddenly paused, and, looking intently up the stream, held up his
hand to his companions to signal them to stop.

Luke and La Bonté both followed the direction of the trapper's intent
and fixed gaze. The former uttered in a suppressed tone the expressive
exclamation, Wagh!--the latter saw nothing but a wood-duck swimming
swiftly down the stream, followed by her downy progeny.

Gonneville turned his head, and, extending his arm twice with a forward
motion up the creek, whispered, "Les sauvages."

"Injuns, sure, and Sioux at that," answered Luke.

Still La Bonté looked, but nothing met his view but the duck with her
brood, now rapidly approaching; and as he gazed, the bird suddenly took
wing, and, flapping on the water, flew a short distance down the stream
and once more settled on it.

"Injuns?" he asked; "where are they?"

"Whar?" repeated old Luke, striking the flint of his rifle, and opening
the pan to examine the priming. "What brings a duck a-streakin' it down
stream if humans ain't behint her? and who's thar in these diggins but
Injuns, and the worst kind? and we'd better push to camp, I'm thinking,
if we mean to save our hair."

"Sign" sufficient, indeed, it was to all the trappers, who, on being
apprised of it, instantly drove in their animals and picketed them; and
hardly had they done so when a band of Indians made their appearance
on the banks of the creek, from whence they galloped to the bluff which
overlooked the camp at the distance of about six hundred yards; and
crowning this in number some forty or more, commenced brandishing their
spears and guns, and whooping loud yells of defiance. The trappers had
formed a little breastwork of their packs, forming a semicircle, the
chord of which was made by the animals standing in a line, side by
side, closely picketed and hobbled. Behind this defense stood the
mountaineers, rifle in hand, and silent and determined. The Indians
presently descended the bluff on foot, leaving their animals in charge
of a few of the party, and, scattering, advanced, under cover of the
sage-bushes which dotted the bottom, to about two hundred yards of the
whites. Then a chief advanced before the rest, and made the sign for
a talk with the Long-knives, which led to a consultation amongst the
latter as to the policy of acceding to it. They were in doubts as to
the nation these Indians belonged to, some bands of the Sioux being
friendly, and others bitterly hostile, to the whites.

Gonneville, who spoke the Sioux language, and was well acquainted with
the nation, affirmed they belonged to a band called the Yanka-taus,
* well known to be the most evil-disposed of that treacherous nation;
another of the party maintained they were Brûlés, and that the chief
advancing towards them was the well-known Tah-sha-tunga or Bull Tail,
a most friendly chief of that tribe. The majority, however, trusted to
Gonneville, and he volunteered to go out to meet the Indian, and
hear what he had to say. Divesting himself of all arms save his
butcher-knife, he advanced towards the savage, who awaited his approach
enveloped in the folds of his blanket. At a glance he knew him to be a
Yanka-tau, from the peculiar make of his moccasins, and the way in which
his face was daubed with paint.

     * Yanktons. (Ed.)

"Howgh!" exclaimed both as they met; and, after a silence of a few
moments, the Indian spoke, asking--"Why the Long-knives hid behind their
packs when his band approached? Were they afraid, or were they preparing
a dog-feast to entertain their friends? The whites were passing through
his country, burning his wood, drinking his water, and killing his game;
but he knew they had now come to pay for the mischief they had done, and
that the mules and horses they had brought with them were intended as a
present to their red friends.

"He was Mah-to-ga-shane," he said, "the Brave Bear: his tongue was
short, but his arm long; and he loved rather to speak with his bow
and his lance than with the weapon of a squaw. He had said it: the
Long-knives had horses with them and mules; and these were for him, he
knew, and for his braves. Let the White-face go back to his people and
return with the animals, or he, the Brave Bear, would have to come and
take them; and his young men would get mad and would feel blood in their
eyes; and then he would have no power over them; and the whites would
have to go under."

The trapper answered shortly. "The Long-knives," he said, "had brought
the horses for themselves--their hearts were big, but not towards the
Yanka-taus; and if they had to give up their animals, it would be to
_men_ and not _squaws_. They were not 'wah-keitcha' * (French engages),
but Long-knives; and, however short were the tongues of the Yanka-taus,
theirs were still shorter, and their rifles longer. The Yanka-taus were
dogs and squaws, and the Long-knives spat upon them."

     * The French Canadians are called wah-keitcha--"bad
     medicine"--by the Indians, who account them treacherous and
     vindictive, and at the same time less daring than the
     American hunters.

Saying this, the trapper turned his back and rejoined his companions;
whilst the Indian slowly proceeded to his people, who, on learning the
contemptuous way in which their threats had been treated, testified
their anger with loud yells; and, seeking whatever cover was afforded,
commenced a scattering volley upon the camp of the mountaineers. The
latter reserved their fire, treating with cool indifference the balls
which began to rattle about them; but as the Indians, emboldened by
this apparent inaction, rushed for a closer position, and exposed their
bodies within a long range, half-a-dozen rifles rang from the assailed,
and two Indians fell dead, one or two more being wounded. As yet, not
one of the whites had been touched, but several of the animals had
received wounds from the enemy's fire of balls and arrows. Indeed, the
Indians remained at too great a distance to render the volleys from
their crazy fusees anything like effectual, and had to raise their
pieces considerably to make their bullets reach as far as the camp.
After three of their band had been killed outright, and many more
wounded, their fire began to slacken, and they drew off to a greater
distance, evidently resolved to beat a retreat. Retiring to the bluff,
they discharged their pieces in a last volley, mounted their horses
and galloped off, carrying their wounded with them. This last volley,
however, although intended as a mere bravado, unfortunately proved fatal
to one of the whites. Gonneville, at the moment, was standing on a pack,
to get an uninterrupted sight for a last shot, when one of the random
bullets struck him in the breast. La Bonté caught him in his arms as he
was about to fall, and laying the wounded trapper gently on the ground,
stripped him of his buckskin hunting-frock, to examine the wound. A
glance was sufficient to convince his companions that the blow was
mortal. The ball had passed through the lungs; and in a few moments the
throat of the wounded man swelled and turned to a livid blue color, as
the choking blood ascended. Only a few drops of purple blood trickled
from the wound--a fatal sign--and the eyes of the mountaineer were
already glazing with death's icy touch. His hand still grasped the
barrel of his rifle, which had done good service in the fray. Anon he
essayed to speak, but, choked with blood, only a few inarticulate words
reached the ears of his companions as they bent over him.

"Rubbed--out--at--last," they heard him say, the words gurgling in his
blood-filled throat; and opening his eyes once more, and turning them
upwards for a last look at the bright sun, the trapper turned gently on
his side and breathed his last sigh.

With no other tools than their scalp-knives, the hunters dug a grave
on the banks of the creek; and whilst some were engaged in this work,
others sought the bodies of the Indians they had slain in the attack,
and presently returned with three reeking scalps, the trophies of the
fight. The body of the mountaineer was wrapped in a buffalo-robe, the
scalps being placed on his breast, and the dead man was then laid in the
shallow grave, and quickly covered--without a word of prayer or sigh of
grief; for however much his companions may have felt, not a word escaped
them. The bitten lip and frowning brow told of anger rather than of
sorrow, as they vowed--what they thought would better please the spirit
of the dead man than vain regrets--bloody and lasting revenge.

Tramping down the earth which filled the grave, they raised upon it a
pile of heavy stones; and packing their mules once more, and taking a
last look at their comrade's lonely resting-place, they turned their
backs upon the stream, which has ever since been known as Gonneville's
Creek.

If the reader casts his eye over any of the recent maps of the western
country which detail the features of the regions embracing the Rocky
Mountains and the vast prairies at their bases, he will not fail to
observe that many of the creeks or smaller streams which feed the larger
rivers--as the Missouri, Platte, and Arkansa--are called by familiar
proper names, both English and French. These are invariably christened
after some unfortunate trapper killed there in Indian fight, or
treacherously slaughtered by the lurking savages, while engaged in
trapping beaver on the stream. Thus alone is the memory of these hardy
men perpetuated, at least of those whose fate is ascertained; for many,
in every season, never return from their hunting expeditions, but meet
a sudden death from Indians, or a more lingering fate from accident or
disease in some lonely gorge of the mountains, where no footfall save
their own, or the heavy tread of the grizzly bear, disturbs the unbroken
silence of the awful solitude. Then, as many winters pass without some
old familiar faces making their appearance at the merry rendezvous,
their long-protracted absence may perhaps elicit a remark, as to where
such and such a mountain worthy can have betaken himself; to which the
casual rejoinder of "Gone under, maybe," too often gives a short but
certain answer.

In all the philosophy of hardened hearts, our hunters turned from the
spot where the unmourned trapper met his death. La Bonté, however, not
yet entirely steeled by mountain life to a perfect indifference to human
feeling, drew his hard hand across his eye, as the unbidden tear rose
from his rough but kindly heart. He could not forget so soon the comrade
he had lost; the companion in the hunt or over the cheerful campfire;
the narrator of many a tale of dangers past--of sufferings from
hunger, cold, thirst, and untended wounds--of Indian perils, and other
vicissitudes. One tear dropped from the young hunter's eye, and rolled
down his cheek--the last for many a long year.

In the forks of the northern branch of the Platte, formed by the
junction of the Laramie, they found a big village of the Sioux encamped
near the station of one of the fur companies. Here the party broke up;
many, finding the alcohol of the traders an impediment to their further
progress, remained some time in the vicinity, while La Bonté, Luke, and
a trapper named Marcelline, started in a few days to the mountains,
to trap on Sweetwater and Medicine Bow. They had leisure, however, to
observe all the rascalities connected with the Indian trade, although at
this season (August) hardly commenced. However, a band of Indians having
come in with several packs of last year's robes, and being anxious
to start speedily on their return, a trader from one of the forts had
erected his lodge in the village.

Here he set to work immediately to induce the Indians to trade. First,
a chief appoints three "soldiers" to guard the trader's lodge from
intrusion; and these sentries amongst the thieving fraternity can be
invariably trusted. Then the Indians are invited to have a drink--a
taste of the fire-water being given to all to incite them to trade.
As the crowd presses upon the entrance to the lodge, and those in rear
become impatient, some large-mouthed savage who has received a portion
of the spirit makes his way, with his mouth full of the liquor and
cheeks distended, through the throng, and is instantly surrounded by his
particular friends. Drawing the face of each, by turns, near his own,
he squirts a small quantity into his open mouth, until the supply
is exhausted, when he returns for more, and repeats the generous
distribution.

When paying for the robes, the traders, in measuring out the liquor in
a tin half-pint cup, thrust their thumbs or the four fingers of the
hand into the measure, in order that it may contain the less, or not
unfrequently fill the bottom with melted buffalo fat, with the same
object. So greedy are the Indians that they never discover the cheat,
and, once under the influence of the liquor, cannot distinguish between
the first cup of comparatively strong spirit, and the following ones
diluted five hundred per cent., and poisonously drugged to boot.

Scenes of drunkenness, riot, and bloodshed last until the trade is over.
In the winter it occupies several weeks, during which period the Indians
present the appearance, under the demoralizing influence of the liquor,
of demons rather than of men.




CHAPTER IV

|LA BONTE and his companions proceeded up the river, the Black Hills on
their left hand, from which several small creeks or feeders swell the
waters of the North Fork. Along these they hunted unsuccessfully for
beaver sign, and it was evident the spring hunt had almost exterminated
the animal in this vicinity. Following Deer Creek to the ridge of the
Black Hills, they crossed the mountain on to the waters of the Medicine
Bow, and here they discovered a few lodges, and La Bonté set his first
trap. He and old Luke finding cuttings near the camp, followed the
sign along the bank, until the practiced eye of the latter discovered
a slide, where the beaver had ascended the bank to chop the trunk of
a cottonwood, and convey the bark to its lodge. Taking a trap from his
sack, the old hunter, after setting the trigger, placed it carefully
under the water, where the slide entered the stream, securing the chain
to the stem of a sapling on the bank; while a stick, also attached to
the trap by a thong, floated down the stream, to mark the position of
the trap should the animal carry it away. A little further on, and near
another run, three traps were set; and over these Luke placed a little
stick, which he first dipped into a mysterious-looking phial containing
his "medicine." *

     * A substance obtained from a gland in the scrotum of the
     beaver, and used to attract that animal to the trap.


The next morning they visited the traps, and had the satisfaction of
finding three fine beaver secured in the first three they visited,
and the fourth, which had been carried away, they discovered by the
float-stick a little distance down the stream, with a large drowned
beaver between its teeth.

The animals being carefully skinned, they returned to camp with the
choicest portions of the meat, and the tails, on which they most
luxuriously supped; and La Bonté was fain to confess that all his
ideas of the superexcellence of buffalo were thrown in the shade by the
delicious beaver-tail, the rich meat of which he was compelled to allow
was "great eating," unsurpassed by tenderloin or "boudin," or other meat
of whatever kind he had eaten of before.

The country where La Bonté and his companions were trapping is very
curiously situated in the extensive bend of the Platte which incloses
the Black Hill range on the north, and which bounds the large expanse of
broken tract known as the Laramie Plains, their southern limit being the
base of the Medicine Bow Mountains. From the north-western corner of
the bend, an inconsiderable range extends to the westward, gradually
increasing in height until it reaches an elevated plain, which forms a
break in the stupendous chain of the Rocky Mountains, and affords the
easy passage now known as the Great, or South Pass. So gradual is the
ascent of this portion of the mountain, that the traveler can scarcely
believe he is crossing the dividing ridge between the waters which flow
into the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and that in a few minutes he
can fling two sticks into two neighboring streams, one to be carried
thousands of miles, traversed by the eastern waters in their course to
the Gulf of Mexico, the other to be borne a lesser distance to the Gulf
of California.

The country is frequented by the Crows and Snakes, who are at perpetual
war with the Shians and Sioux, following them often far down the Platte,
where many bloody battles have taken place. The Crows are esteemed
friendly to the whites; but when on war expeditions, and "hair" their
object, it is always dangerous to fall in with Indian war-parties, and
particularly in the remote regions of the mountains, where they do not
anticipate retaliation.

Trapping with tolerable success in this vicinity, the hunters crossed
over, as soon as the premonitory storms of approaching winter warned
them to leave the mountains, to the waters of Green River, one of the
affluents of the Colorado, intending to winter at a rendezvous to be
held in Brown's Hole--an inclosed valley so called--which, abounding
in game, and sheltered on every side by lofty mountains, is a favorite
wintering-ground of the mountaineers. Here they found several trapping
bands already arrived; and a trader from the Uintah country, with store
of powder, lead, and tobacco, prepared to ease them of their hard-earned
peltries.

Singly, and in bands numbering from two to ten, the trappers dropped
into the rendezvous; some with many pack-loads of beaver, others with
greater or less quantity, and more than one on foot, having lost his
animals and peltry by Indian thieving. Here were soon congregated many
mountaineers, whose names are famous in the history of the Far West.
Fitzpatrick and Hatcher, and old Bill Williams, well-known leaders of
trapping parties, soon arrived with their bands. Sublette came in with
his men from Yellow Stone, and many of Wyeth's New Englanders were
there. Chabonard with his half-breeds, Wah-keitchas all, brought his
peltries from the lower country; and half-a-dozen Shawanee and Delaware
Indians, with a Mexican from Taos, one Marcelline, a fine strapping
fellow, the best trapper and hunter in the mountains, and ever first in
the fight. Here, too, arrived the "Bourgeois" traders of the "North West
* Company," with their superior equipments, ready to meet their trappers,
and purchase the beaver at an equitable value; and soon the trade
opened, and the encampment assumed a busy appearance.

     * The Hudson's Bay Company is so called by the American
     trappers.

A curious assemblage did the rendezvous present, and representatives of
many a land met there. A son of _la belle France_ here lit his pipe from
one proffered by a native of New Mexico. An Englishman and a Sandwich
Islander cut a quid from the same plug of tobacco. A Swede and an old
Virginian puffed together. A Shawanee blew a peaceful cloud with a scion
of the Six Nations. One from the Land of Cakes--a canny chiel--sought
to "great round" (in trade) a right "smart" Yankee, but couldn't
"shine."

The beaver went briskly, six dollars being the price paid per lb. in
goods--for money is seldom given in the mountain market, where beaver is
cash, for which the articles supplied by the traders are bartered. In a
very short time peltries of every description had changed hands, either
by trade, or by gambling with cards and betting. With the mountain-men
bets decide every question that is raised, even the most trivial; and if
the editor of "Bell's Life" were to pay one of these rendezvous a winter
visit, he would find the broad sheet of his paper hardly capacious
enough to answer all the questions which would be referred to his
decision.

Before the winter was over, La Bonté had lost all traces of civilized
humanity, and might justly claim to be considered as "hard a case" as
any of the mountaineers then present. Long before the spring opened,
he had lost all the produce of his hunt and both his animals, which,
however, by a stroke of luck, he recovered, and wisely held on to for
the future. Right glad when spring appeared, he started from Brown's
Hole, with four companions, to hunt the Uintah or Snake country, and the
affluents of the larger streams which rise in that region and fall into
the Gulf of California.

In the valley of the Bear River they found beaver abundant, and trapped
their way westward until they came upon the famed locality of the Beer
and Soda Springs--natural fountains of mineral water, renowned amongst
the trappers as being "medicine" of the first order.

Arriving one evening, about sundown, at the Bear Spring, they found a
solitary trapper sitting over the rocky basin, intently regarding, with
no little awe, the curious phenomenon of the bubbling gas. Behind him
were piled his saddles and a pack of skins, and at a little distance a
hobbled Indian pony fed amongst the cedars which formed a grove round
the spring. As the three hunters dismounted from their animals, the lone
trapper scarcely noticed their arrival, his eyes being still intently
fixed upon the water. Looking round at last, he was instantly recognized
by one of La Bonté's companions, and saluted as "Old Rube." Dressed from
head to foot in buckskin, his face, neck, and hands appeared to be of
the same leathery texture, so nearly did they assimilate in color to
the materials of his dress. He was at least six feet two or three in his
moccasins, straight-limbed and wiry, with long arms ending in hands of
tremendous grasp, and a quantity of straight black hair hanging on his
shoulders. His features, which were undeniably good, wore an expression
of comical gravity, never relaxing into a smile, which a broad
good-humored mouth could have grinned from ear to ear.

"What, boys!" he said, "will you be simple enough to camp here alongside
these springs? Nothing good ever came of sleeping here, I tell you, and
the worst kind of devils are in those dancing waters."

"Why, old hoss," cried La Bonté, "what brings you hyar then, and camp at
that?"

"This nigger," answered Rube, solemnly, "has been down'd upon a sight
too often to be skeared by what can come out from them waters; and thar
am't a devil as hisses thar as can shine with this child, I tell you.
I've tried him onest, an' fout him to clawin' away to Eustis; * and if
I draws my knife again on such varmint, I'll raise his hair, as sure as
shootin'."

     * A small lake near the head-waters of the Yellow Stone,
     near which are some curious thermal springs of ink-black
     water.

Spite of the reputed dangers of the locality, the trappers camped on the
spot, and many a draught of the delicious sparkling water they quaffed
in honor of the "medicine" of the fount. Rube, however, sat sulky and
silent, his huge form bending over his legs, which were crossed, Indian
fashion, under him, and his long bony fingers spread over the fire,
which had been made handy to the spring. At last they elicited from
him that he had sought this spot for the purpose of "_making medicine_"
having been persecuted by extraordinary ill-luck, even at this early
period of his hunt--the Indians having stolen two out of his three
animals, and three of his half-dozen traps. He had therefore sought
the springs for the purpose of invoking the fountain spirits, which, a
perfect Indian in his simple heart, he implicitly believed to inhabit
their mysterious waters. When the others had, as he thought, fallen
asleep, La Bonté observed the ill-starred trapper take from his pouch a
curiously-carved red stone pipe, which he carefully charged with tobacco
and kinnik-kinnik. Then approaching the spring, he walked three times
round it, and gravely sat himself down. Striking fire with his flint and
steel, he lit his pipe, and bending the stem three several times towards
the water, he inhaled a vast quantity of smoke, and bending back his
neck and looking upwards, puffed it into the air. He then blew another
puff towards the four points of the compass, and emptying the pipe into
his hand, cast the consecrated contents into the spring, saying a few
Indian "medicine" words of cabalistic import. Having performed the
ceremony to his satisfaction, he returned to the fire, smoked a pipe on
his own hook, and turned into his buffalo-robe, conscious of having done
a most important duty.

In the course of their trapping expedition, and accompanied by Rube,
who knew the country well, they passed near the Great Salt Lake, a vast
inland sea, whose salitrose waters cover an extent of upwards of one
hundred and forty miles in length, by eighty in breadth. Fed by several
streams, of which the Big Bear River is the most considerable, this
lake presents the curious phenomenon of a vast body of water without any
known outlet. According to the trappers, an island, from which rises a
chain of lofty mountains, nearly divides the north-western portion of
the lake, whilst a smaller one, within twelve miles of the northern
shore, rises six hundred feet from the level of the water. Rube declared
to his companions that the larger island was known by the Indians to be
inhabited by a race of giants, with whom no communication had ever been
held by mortal man; and but for the casual wafting to the shores of the
lake of logs of gigantic trees, cut by axes of extraordinary size, the
world would never have known that such a people existed. They were,
moreover, white as themselves, and lived upon corn and fruits, and rode
on elephants, &c.

Whilst following a small creek at the southwest extremity of the lake,
they came upon a band of miserable Indians, who, from the fact of their
subsisting chiefly on roots, are called the Diggers. At first sight
of the whites they immediately fled from their wretched huts, and made
towards the mountains; but one of the trappers, galloping up on his
horse, cut off their retreat, and drove them like sheep before him back
to their village. A few of these wretched creatures came into camp at
sundown, and were regaled with such meat as the larder afforded. They
appeared to have no other food in their village but bags of dried
ants and their larvae, and a few roots of the yampah. Their huts
were constructed of a few bushes of greasewood, piled up as a sort of
windbreak, in which they huddled in their filthy skins. During the night
they crawled up to the camp and stole two of the horses, and the next
morning not a sign of them was visible. Now La Bonté witnessed a case of
mountain law, and the practical effects of the _lex talionis_ of the Far
West.

The trail of the runaway Diggers bore to the north-west, or along the
skirt of a barren waterless desert, which stretches far away from the
southern shores of the Salt Lake to the borders of Upper California.
La Bonté, with three others, determined to follow the thieves, recover
their animals, and then rejoin the other two (Luke and Rube) on a creek
two days' journey from their present camp. Starting at sunrise, they
rode on at a rapid pace all day, closely following the trail, which led
directly to the north-west, through a wretched sandy country, without
game or water. From the appearance of the track, the Indians must still
have been several hours ahead of them, when the fatigue of their horses,
suffering from want of grass and water, compelled them to camp near the
head of a small water-course, where they luckily found a hole containing
a little water, and whence a broad Indian trail passed, apparently
frequently used. Long before daylight they were again in the saddle,
and, after proceeding a few miles, saw the lights of several fires a
short distance ahead of them. Halting here, one of the party advanced on
foot to reconnoiter, and presently returned with the intelligence that
the party they were in pursuit of had joined a village numbering thirty
or forty huts.

Loosening their girths, they permitted their tired animals to feed
on the scanty herbage which presented itself, whilst they refreshed
themselves with a pipe of tobacco--for they had no meat of any
description with them, and the country afforded no game. As the first
streak of dawn appeared in the east, they mounted their horses, after
first examining their rifles, and moved cautiously towards the Indian
village. As it was scarcely light enough for their operations, they
waited behind a sandhill in the vicinity until objects became more
distinct; and then, emerging from their cover with loud war-whoops, they
charged abreast into the midst of the village.

As the frightened Indians were scarcely risen from their beds, no
opposition was given to the daring mountaineers, who, rushing upon
the flying crowd, discharged their rifles at close quarters, and then,
springing from their horses, attacked them knife in hand, and only
ceased the work of butchery when nine Indians lay dead upon the ground.
All this time the women, half dead with fright, were huddled together on
the ground, howling piteously; and the mountaineers, advancing to them,
whirled their lassos round their heads, and, throwing the open nooses
into the midst, hauled out three of them, and securing their arms in the
rope, bound them to a tree, and then proceeded to scalp the dead bodies.
Whilst they were engaged in this work, an old Indian, withered and
grisly, and hardly bigger than an ape, suddenly emerged from a rock,
holding in his left hand a bow and a handful of arrows, whilst one was
already drawn to the head. Running towards them, and almost before the
hunters were aware of his presence, he discharged an arrow at a few
yards' distance, which buried itself in the ground not a foot from La
Bonté's head as he bent over the body of the Indian he was scalping; and
hardly had the whiz ceased, when whirr flew another, striking him in his
right shoulder. Before the Indian could fit a third arrow to his bow, La
Bonté sprang upon him, seized him by the middle, and spinning his pigmy
form round his head as easily as he would have twirled a tomahawk, he
threw him with tremendous force on the ground at the feet of one of
his companions, who, stooping down, coolly thrust his knife into the
Indian's breast, and quickly tore off his scalp.

The slaughter over, without casting an eye to the captive squaws, the
trappers proceeded to search the village for food, of which they stood
much in need. Nothing, however, was found but a few bags of dried ants,
which, after eating voraciously of, but with wry mouths, they threw
aside, saying the food was worse than "poor bull." They found, however,
the animals they had been robbed of, and two more besides--wretched
half-starved creatures; and on these mounting their captives, they
hurried away on their journey back to their companions, the distance
being computed at three days' travel from their present position.
However, they thought, by taking a more direct course, they might find
better pasture for their animals, and water, besides saving at least
half a day by the short cut.

To their cost, they proved the old saying, that "a short cut is always a
long road," as will be presently shown.

It has been said that from the south-western extremity of the Great
Salt Lake a vast desert extends for hundreds of miles, unbroken by the
slightest vegetation, destitute of game and water, and presenting a
cheerless expanse of sandy plain or rugged mountain, thinly covered
with dwarf pine or cedar, the only evidence of vegetable life. Into this
desert, ignorant of the country, the trappers struck, intending to make
their short cut; and, traveling on all day, were compelled to camp
at night without water or pasture for their exhausted animals, and
themselves ravenous with hunger and parched with thirst. The next
day three of their animals gave out, and they were fain to leave them
behind; but imagining that they must soon strike a creek, they pushed on
until noon, but still no water presented itself, nor a sign of game of
any description. The animals were nearly exhausted, and a horse which
could scarcely keep up with the slow pace of the others was killed, and
its blood greedily drunk--a portion of the flesh being eaten raw, and a
supply carried with them for future emergencies.

The next morning two of the horses lay dead at their pickets, and one
only remained, and this in such a miserable state that it could not
possibly have traveled six miles further. It was therefore killed,
and its blood drunk, of which, however, the captive squaws refused to
partake. The men began to feel the effects of their consuming thirst,
which the hot horse's blood only served to increase; their lips became
parched and swollen, their eyes bloodshot, and a giddy sickness seized
them at intervals. About mid-day they came in sight of a mountain
on their right hand, which appeared to be more thickly clothed with
vegetation; and arguing from this that water would be found there, they
left their course and made towards it, although some eight or ten miles
distant. On arriving at the base, the most minute search failed to
discover the slightest traces of water, and the vegetation merely
consisted of dwarf pinon and cedar. With their sufferings increased
by the exertion they had used in reaching the mountain, they once more
sought the trail, but every step told on their exhausted frames. The
sun was very powerful; the sand over which they floundered was deep and
heavy; and, to complete their sufferings, a high wind blew it in their
faces, filling their mouths and noses with its searching particles.

Still they struggled onwards manfully, and not a murmur was heard until
their hunger had entered the _second stage_ upon the road to starvation.
They had now been three days without food or water, under which
privation nature can hardly sustain herself for a much longer period.

On the fourth morning the men looked wolfish, their captives following
behind in sullen and perfect indifference, occasionally stooping down to
catch a beetle if one presented itself, and greedily devouring it. A
man named Forey, * a Canadian half-breed, was the first to complain.
"If this lasted another sundown," he said, "some of them would be rubbed
out; that meat had to be raised anyhow; and for his part, he knew where
to look for a feed, if no game was seen before they put out of camp on
the morrow; and meat was meat, anyhow they fixed it."

     * Also known as Furey. (Ed.)

No answer was made to this, though his companions well understood him:
their natures as yet revolted against the last expedient. As for the
three squaws, all of them young girls, they followed behind their
captors without a word of complaint, and with the stoical indifference
to pain and suffering which alike characterizes the haughty Delaware
of the North and the miserable stunted Digger of the deserts of the
Far West. On the morning of the fifth day the party were seated round a
small fire of pinon, hardly able to rise and commence their journey, the
squaws squatting over another at a little distance, when Forey commenced
again to suggest that, if nothing offered, they must either take the
alternative of starving to death--for they could not hope to last
another day:--or have recourse to the revolting extremity of
sacrificing one of the party to save the lives of all. To this, however,
there was a murmur of dissent, and it was finally resolved that all
should sally out and hunt, for a deer-track had been discovered near the
camp, which, although it was not a fresh one, proved that there must be
game in the vicinity. Weak and exhausted as they were, they took their
rifles and started for the neighboring uplands, each taking a different
direction.

It was nearly sunset when La Bonté returned to the camp, where he
already espied one of his companions engaged in cooking something over
the fire. Hurrying to the spot, overjoyed with the anticipations of a
feast, he observed that the squaws were gone; but, at the same time,
thought it was not improbable they had escaped during their absence.
Approaching the fire, he observed Forey broiling some meat on the
embers, whilst at a little distance lay what he fancied was the carcass
of a deer.

"Hurrah, boy!" he exclaimed, as he drew near the fire. "You've made a
raise, I see."

"_Well_, I have," rejoined the other, turning his meat with the point of
his butcher-knife. "There's the meat, hoss--help yourself."

La Bonté drew his knife from the scabbard, and approached the spot
his companion was pointing to; but what was his horror to see the yet
quivering body of one of the Indian squaws, with a large portion of
the flesh butchered from it, part of which Forey was already greedily
devouring. The knife dropped from his hand, and his heart rose to his
throat.

The next day he and his companion struck the creek where Rube and the
other trapper had agreed to await them, and found them in camp with
plenty of meat, and about to start again on their hunt, having given up
the others for lost. From the day they parted, nothing was ever heard
of La Bonté's other two companions, who doubtless fell a prey to utter
exhaustion, and were unable to return to the camp. And thus ended the
Digger expedition.

It may appear almost incredible that men having civilized blood in their
veins could perpetrate such wanton and cold-blooded acts of aggression
on the wretched Indians as that detailed above; but it is fact that the
mountaineers never lose an opportunity of slaughtering these miserable
Diggers, and attacking their villages, often for the purpose of
capturing women, whom they carry off, and not unfrequently sell to
other tribes, or to each other. In these attacks neither sex nor age
is spared; and your mountaineer has as little compunction in taking
the life of an Indian woman, as he would have in sending his rifle-ball
through the brain of a Crow or Black-foot warrior.

La Bonté now found himself without animals, and fairly afoot;
consequently nothing remained for him but to seek some of the trapping
bands, and hire himself for the hunt. Luckily for him, he soon fell in
with Roubideau, on his way to Uintah, and was supplied by him with a
couple of animals; and thus equipped, he started again with a large band
of trappers, who were going to hunt on the waters of Grand River and
the Gila. Here they fell in with another nation of Indians, from which
branch out the innumerable tribes inhabiting Northern Mexico and part
of California. They were in general friendly, but lost no opportunity
of stealing horses or any articles left lying about the camp. On one
occasion, the trappers being camped on a northern affluent of the Gila,
a volley of arrows was discharged amongst them, severely wounding one or
two of the party as they sat round the camp-fires. The attack, however,
was not renewed, and the next day the camp was moved further down the
stream, where beaver was tolerably abundant. Before sundown a number of
Indians made their appearance, and, making signs of peace, were admitted
into the camp.

The trappers were all sitting at their suppers over the fires, the
Indians looking gravely on, when it was remarked that now would be a
good opportunity to retaliate upon them for the trouble their incessant
attacks had entailed upon the camp. The suggestion was highly approved
of, and instantly acted upon. Springing to their feet, the trappers
seized their rifles, and commenced the slaughter. The Indians,
panic-struck, fled without resistance, and numbers fell before the
death-dealing rifles of the mountaineers. A chief, who had been sitting
on a rock near the fire where the leader of the trappers sat, had been
singled out by the latter as the first mark for his rifle.

Placing the muzzle to his heart, he pulled the trigger, but the
Indian, with extraordinary tenacity of life, rose and grappled with his
assailant. The white was a tall powerful man, but notwithstanding the
deadly wound the Indian had received, he had his equal in strength to
contend against. The naked form of the Indian twisted and writhed in his
grasp as he sought to avoid the trapper's uplifted knife. Many of the
lat-ter's companions advanced to administer the _coup-de-grace_ to the
savage, but the trapper cried to them to keep off: "If he couldn't whip
the Injun," he said "he'd go under."

At length he succeeded in throwing him, and, plunging his knife no
less than seven times into his body, he tore off his scalp, and went in
pursuit of the flying savages. In the course of an hour or two all the
party returned, and, sitting by the fires, resumed their suppers, which
had been interrupted in the manner just described. Walker, the captain
of the band, sat down by the fire where he had been engaged in the
struggle with the Indian chief, whose body was lying within a few paces
of it. He was in the act of fighting the battle over again to one of his
companions, and was saying that the Indian had as much life in him as
a buffalo bull, when, to the horror of all present, the savage, who had
received wounds sufficient for twenty deaths, suddenly rose to a sitting
posture, the fire shedding a glowing light upon the horrid spectacle.
The face was a mass of clotted blood, which flowed from the lacerated
scalp, whilst gouts of blood streamed from eight gaping wounds in the
naked breast.

Slowly this frightful figure rose to a sitting posture, and, bending
slowly forward to the fire, the mouth was seen to open wide, and a
hollow gurgling--owg-h-h--broke from it.

"H--!" exclaimed the trapper--and jumping up, he placed a pistol to the
ghastly head, the eyes of which sternly fixed themselves on his, and,
pulling the trigger, blew the poor wretch's skull to atoms.

The Gila passes through a barren sandy country, with but little game,
and sparsely inhabited by several different tribes of the great nation
of the Apache. Unlike the rivers of this western region, this stream
is, in most parts of its course, particularly towards its upper waters,
entirely bare of timber, and the bottom, through which it runs, affords
but little of the coarsest grass.

Whilst on this stream, the trapping party lost several animals for want
of pasture, and many more from the predatory attacks of the cunning
Indians. These losses, however, they invariably made good whenever they
encountered a native village--taking care, moreover, to repay themselves
with interest whenever occasion offered.

Notwithstanding the sterile nature of the country, the trappers, during
their passage up the Gila, saw with astonishment that the arid and
barren valley had once been peopled by a race of men far superior to
the present nomad tribes who roam over it. With no little awe they gazed
upon the ruined walls of large cities, and the remains of houses, with
their ponderous beams and joists, still testifying to the skill and
industry with which they were constructed: huge ditches and irrigating
canals, now filled with rank vegetation, furrowed the plains in the
vicinity, marking the spot where once green waving maize and smiling
gardens covered what now is a bare and sandy desert. Pieces of broken
pottery, of domestic utensils, stained with bright colors, everywhere
strewed the ground; and spear and arrow heads of stone, and
quaintly-carved idols, and women's ornaments of agate and obsidian,
were picked up often by the wondering trappers, examined with childlike
curiosity, and thrown carelessly aside. *

     * The Aztecs are supposed to have built this city during
     their migration to the south: there is little doubt,
     however, but that the region extending from the Gila to the
     Great Salt Lake, and embracing the province of New Mexico,
     was the locality from which they emigrated.

A Taos Indian, who was amongst the band, was evidently impressed with
a melancholy awe as he regarded these ancient monuments of his fallen
people. At midnight he rose from his blanket and left the camp, which
was in the vicinity of the ruined city, stealthily picking his way
through the line of slumbering forms which lay around; and the watchful
sentinel observed him approach the ruins with a slow and reverential
gait. Entering the moldering walls, he gazed silently arou

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/46328