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NEW EDITION WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXVIII ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BLACKWOOD's MAGAZINE THE LATE GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON. THE London newspapers of October 1848 contained the mournful tidings of the death, at St Louis on the Missis- sippi, and at the early age of twenty-eight, of Lieutenant George Frederick Ruxton, formerly of her Majesty's 89th Eegiment, 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 honour than this lamented young officer. Time was not granted him to embody in a perma- nent shape a tithe of his personal experiences and strange adventures in three quarters of the globe. Considering, indeed, the amount of physical labour 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 Sand- hurst, 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 honour which has seldom been awarded to one so young. On his return from Spain he found himself gazetted to a 2037923 IV THE LATE commission in the 89th Regiment ; and it was whilst serv- ing 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 mon- otony 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 lie 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 faitliful 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 cas- tles in its vapoury 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 civilised life ; and unnatural and extraordinaiy as it may appear, yet such is the fascination of the life of the mountain hunter, that I GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON. V believe not one instance could be adduced of even the most polished and civilised 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 characterised 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 Rux- ton, 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. Prepar- ing 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 mercan- tile establishments. The intrepid traveller had received from the agents of these establishments such favourable 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 Rux- ton have acquired for himself a permanent name among British travellers, 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 ex- Yi THE LATE ploration. 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 imme- diate 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 travellers 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 travellers save that of retracing their steps a labour 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 pi-osecution 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 accom- plishment of his favourite project, Mr Ruxton, on his return to England, made application for Government assist- ance. But though this demand was not altogether refused, it having been referred to the Council of the Royal Geo- graphical Society, and favourably reported upon by that body, so many delays interposed that Ruxton, in disgust, resolved to withdraw from the scheme, and to abandon GEORGE FREDERICK RDXTON. VU that field of African research which, he had already con- templated 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 fascin- ating 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 Aborigines Protection Society wish me to go out to Canada to organise the Indian tribes ; whilst, for my own part and inclination, I wish to go to all parts of the world at once." As regards the volume to which this notice serves as Preface, the editor does not hesitate to express a very high opinion of its merits. Written by a man untrained to literature, and whose life, from boyhood upwards, was passed in the field and on the road, in military adventure and travel, its style is yet often as remarkable for graphic terseness and vigour, as its substance everywhere is for great novelty and originality. The narrative of " Life in the Far West " was first offered for insertion in 'Blackwood's Magazine' in the spring of 1848, when the greater portion of the manuscript was sent, and the remainder shortly followed. During its publication in that periodical, the wildness of the adventures related excited suspicions in certain quarters as to their actual truth and fidelity. It may interest the reader to know that the scenes described are pictures from life, the results of the author's personal experience. The following are extracts from letters ad- Vlll THE LATE dressed by him, in the course of last summer, to the conductors of the Magazine above named : " 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 hos ' par exemple, was really pretty much of a gentle- man, as was La Bonte. Bill Williams, another ' hard case,' and Rube Herring, were ' some ' too. " The scene where La Bonte 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 stampedoed 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 Mexi- cans, at 1-east, being in the room. " With regard to the incidents of Indian attacks, starva- * 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 Rurton, who always contemplated another expedition among them, would sometimes jestingly specu- late upon his reception, should they learn that he had shown them up in print. GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTON'. IX tion, cannibalism, &c., I have invented not one out of my own head. They are all matters of history in the moun- tains ; but I have no doubt jumbled the dramatis per- sona; one with another, and may have committed anachron- isms in the order of their occurrence." Again he wrote as follows : " T think it would be as well to correct a misapprehen- sion as to the truth and 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 the originals of these being, however, equally well known with the others." His last letter, written just before his departure from England, a few weeks previously to his death, will hardly be read by any one 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 com- menced the hazardous journey whose excitement and dan- gers he so joyously anticipated : "As you say, human nature can't go on feeding on civil- ised 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 vid New York, the Lakes, and St Louis, to Fort Lavenworth, 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 Fe trail to the Arkansa, away up that river to the mountains, winter in the Bayou Salade, where Killbuck and La Bonte" joined the Yutes, cross the mountains next spring to Great Salt Lake and that's far enough to look forward to always X THE LATE 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. An- other 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 Kocky Moun- tains, 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 dis- solution. From whatsoever this ensued, it will be a source of deep and lasting regret to all who ever enjoyed oppor- tunities of appreciating the high and sterling qualities of George Frederick Euxton. 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. GEORGE FREDERICK RUXTOX. XI Had he lived, and resisted his friends' repeated solicita- tions 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 per- suaded that none will peruse without interest this brief tribute to the merits of a gallant soldier and accomplished English gentleman. February 1849. LIFE IN THE FAE WEST CHAPTEE 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 umisually 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 raw hide ; and, guarding these animals, two men paced backwards and forwards, driving in the stragglers, ascending ever and anon the bluffs which over- hung the river, and leaning on their long rifles, whilst they swept with their eyes the surrounding prairie. Three or A 2 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. four fires burned in the encampment, at some of which Indian women carefully tended sundry steaming pots ; whilst round one, which was in the centre of it, four oj 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 grey, 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 mocassins 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 " tender loin " 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 hand- some 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, / can tell you. Thar was old Sam Owins him as got ' rubbed out '* by the Spaniards at Sacrament}'-, or Chihuahuy, this hos doesn't know which, but he ' went under 't anyhow. Well, Sam had his train along, ready to hitch up for the Mexican country twenty thunderin' big Pittsburg waggons ; and the way his Santa Fe boys took in the liquor beat all eh, Bill ? " * Killed, Iboth terms adapted from the Indian figurative lan- t Died, ) guage. LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 3 " 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 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 Aikansa. Poor Bill Bent ! them Spaniards made meat of him. He lost his topknot to Taos. A ' clever ' man was Bill Bent as 7 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 Fe 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 niggur's hump-ribs. Fort William t 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?" " He is so-o." " Chavez had his waggons along. He was only a Span- iard 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 ! " * The Mexicans are called " Spaniards " or " Greasers " (from their greasy appearance) by the Western people. + Bent's Indian trading fort on the Arkansa. 4 LIFE IN* TEIE FAR WEST. "Surely Black Harris was thar; and the darndest liar was Black Harris for lies tumbled out of his mouth like boudins out of a butler'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 niggur's no trav'ler; I ar* a trapper, marm, a mountain- man, wagh!' " ' Well, Mister Harris, trappers are great travelers, 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 't 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, marin, but I've seen a putrefied forest.' " ' 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 doina 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 mocassins (leastwise the * 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. t Scalped. LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 6 par flesh*) for six weeks ; and poor doins that feedin' is, marm, as you'll never know. One day we crossed a ' canon ' 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.' " ' 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 Eube. ' Hyar's a hos 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 niggur.' " '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 Sub- lette'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 * Soles made of buffalo hide. 6 LIFE IN THE FAB WEST. 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, marrn, if that wasn't a putre- fied peraira, what was it ? For this hos doesn't know, and lie 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 font 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'cl. He w r as 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.f 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. "Nigh upon two hundred dollars I had in my possibles, * The Hudson Bay Company, having amalgamated with the American North- West Company, is known by the name 'North- West' to the southern trappers. Their employe's usually wear Canadian capotes. T A spice of the devil. LIFE IX THE FAR WEST. 7 when I went to that camp to see the boys afore they put out ; and you know, Bill, as I sat to ' Euker ' and ' sevei. 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 1 ar on Bijou, with half a pack of beaver, and running meat yet, old hos ; 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 Eapahos will be after the animals to-night, or I'm no judge of Injun sign. How many did you see, Maurice ? " "Enfant de Garce, 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 niggur 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 1" " 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,f when I see * "Euker," "poker," and "seven up," are the fashionable games of cards, t Antelope are frequently called "goats " by the mountaineers. 8 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. the cntturs 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 green- horn 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 Paw- nees come a-screechin' upon us. I cuts the hobbles and jumps on the mule, and, when I looks back, there was Dick Soines ramming a ball down his gun like mad, and the Injuns flinging their arrows at him pretty smart, I tell you. '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 porkypine ; one was sticking right through his cheek, one in his meat-ba;.:, 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 hos'-guard with the animals, and keep your eyes skinned.' " Well, as soon as the animals were unhitched from the waggons, 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 LIFE IN TUB FAR WEST. 9 we get to the fires, the Injuns were among the cavayard. I saw Ned Collyer and his brother, who were in the hos'- 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 '11 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 hand- some, I tell you. But three of the hos'-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 up- right 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, Wai- 10 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. nut 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 waggons destined for Santa Fe, have trailed us up the Arkansa to Bent's Fort ; thence up Boil- ing 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 val- leys 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 niggur lifted hair that spree," &c. that a whiz- zing 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 woods- man 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 warn- ing of the leader, and showed that the guard was on the alert, and understood the signal. However, with the rnani- LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 11 festation of their presence, tne 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 signalise himself at the outset of the cam- paign. After waiting some few minutes, expecting a re- newal 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 hob- bling and securing them to pickets firmly driven into the ground, mounting an additional guard, and examining the neighbouring 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 f jr their lives, was within a thousand miles of their peril- ous encampment. " If ever thar was bad Injuns on these plains," at last growled Killbuck, biting hard the pipe-stem between his teeth, " it's these Rapahos, and the meanest kind at that." " Can't beat the Blackfeet, anyhow," chimed in one La Bonte, 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 for- wards to the fire, and exhibiting an arrow sticking out un- der his right shoulder-blade, and a stream of blood trickling down his buckskin coat from the wound. This his nearest neighbour 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 ft 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 vapours faded from the moun- 12 LIFE IN THE FAB WEST. tains, 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 in- tervals, 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 perish- able 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 ttys 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. Hav- ing performed these operations to his satisfaction, he lighted his pipe by the hissing embers of the half-extinguished fire LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 13 (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 mocassined foot the slumbering ashes, he squatted down before it, and thus soliloquised : " Thirty year have I been knocking about these moun- tains from Missoura's head as far sothe as the starving Qila. 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 conies 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. Be- side, 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 ! " Thus soliloquising, 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 * An Indian is always " a heap " hungry or thirsty loves " a heap" is "a heap" brave ; iu fact, "a heap" is tantamount to very much. 14 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. he carefully covered with the folds of his Navajo blanket, and, striding into the darkness, cautiously reconnoitred 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 grey eye 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 recognised 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 lie was in the land of dreams ; revelling amongst bands of " fat cow," or hunting along a stream well peopled with beav er ; with no Indian " sign " to disturb him, and the merry rendezvous in close perspective, and his peltry sell- ing 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 vicis- situdes of his hard, hard life starving one day, revelling 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 wel- come 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 homminy 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, LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 15 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 Killbtick. For a moment the hunter staggered, threw 16 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 Bonte 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 w r ithin 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 c&che themselves until the danger was over. Not so La Bonte, 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 recognised 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 17 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 Bonte 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 Bonte, 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 undis- covered, 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 melan- choly 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 cache the beaver. Fourth, we take the Injun trail, wharever it leads." No more daring mountaineer than La Bonte 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 cache. In this instance they had not sufficient time to construct a regular one, so they contented them- selves with securing their packs of beaver in buffalo robes, and tying them in the fork* of several cotton-woods, under B 18 LIFE IN THE FAE WEST. which the canjp 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 re- quiring 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 ex- peditions 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 paralyses the physical energy of his active body ; and who, by waiting for propi- tious signs and seasons before he undertakes an enterprise, often loses the opportunity by which his white and more civilised enemy knows so well how to profit. Killbuck and La Bont4 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 water-courses which feed the creek called " Vermillion " or " Cherry," they pursued the trail over the mountain-spurs until it readied 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 Sulade, a mountain valley which is a favourite resort of LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 19 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 west- ward, about noon he crossed a mountain-chain, and de- scending into a ravine through which a little rivulet tumbled over its rocky bed, he at once proved the correct- ness 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. " Wagh ! " exclaimed both the hunters in a breath. "And thar's the old gal at that," chuckled Killbuck, as he recognised 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 bot- tom to cache 'em till they come back from the Bayou, and maybe they'll leave half-a-dozen soldiers* with 'em." How right the wily trapper was in his conjectures will * The young untried warriors of the Indians are thus called. 20 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 impos- sible 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 pre- dicted the movements in the Indian camp. About three hours before " sundown " he rose and shook himself, which movement was sufficient to awaken his companion. Tell- ing La Bonte" to lie down again and rest, he gave him to understand that he was aboat to reconnoitre the enemy's camp ; and after carefully examining his rifle, and draw- ing 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 dis- covered. 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-vitse, that not a particle of his person could be detected ; unless, indeed, his sharp twinkling grey eye contrasted too strongly with the green boughs that covered the rest of his face. More- over, 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 mocassin was LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 21 visible. Here he lay, still as a carcagien 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 kinnik-kinnik. The council, however, was not general, for only fifteen of the older warriors took part in it, the others sitting ontside, 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. Near the fire, and in the centre 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. * 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 centre^ 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." 22 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 al chough four scalps already ornamented the "medi- cine " 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 hia 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 under- stood 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 23 the bluff, and, rising from the ground, shook and stretched himself; then gave one cautious look around, and imme- diately 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 hos," answered La Bontd, 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 In- dian 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 pro- nounced 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 sqiialls 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. 24 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 hinny of recognition, which would at once alarm the enemy. He therefore first ascer- tained where his own animal was feeding, which luckily was at the farther side of the prairie, and would not inter- fere 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 stern 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 gripe. 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, illuminat- ing 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 mash-r. Killbuck, with eyes fixed upon the Indians, was on the point of giving the signal of attack to his comrade, when the shrill hinny of his mule reverberated through the gorge. The Indians jumped to their feet and seized their urms, when Killbuck, with a loud shout of "At 'em, boy ; LIFE IN TIIE FAR WEST. 25 give the niggurs h ! " rushed from his concealment, and with La Bonte" by his side, yelling a tierce 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 Kill- buck 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 Bonte, 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 Bonte threw his empty one at the head of an Indian who was pulling his second arrow to its head at a yard's dis- tance, 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 homt another ball, he sent a shot flying after them as the} 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." 26 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 fcght was bad, and I couldn't get a ' bead ' ' off-hand ' any- how." Seizing with his left hand the long and braided lock on the centre 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 reek- ing 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 Bonte" operating ifpon 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 niggur," 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 pjaced it with the other. La Bonte 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 per- ceptible near the surface of the other side. To free his leg from the painful encumbrance, he thrust the weapon com- pletely through, and then, cutting off the arrow- head 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 Bonte 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 27 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 Ra- pahos 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. Killbuck's wound became very pain- ful, and his leg stiffened and swelled distressingly, but he still pushed on all night, and at daybreak, recognising 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 them- selves 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 table- lands in the very centre 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 thp favour- ite 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 28 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. fall and summer pasture of the lowlands has laid upon their hones. Therefore is this valley sought by the Indians as a wintering-ground. Its occupancy has heen 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 Ra- pahos seldom visit it unless on war expeditions against the Yutas. 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 instant- ly 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 vil- lage, awaited, with dignified composure, the arrival of the whites. Killbuck was well known to most of them, hav- ing 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 29 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 commo- tion : the war-shout was taken up from lodge to lodge ; the squaws began to lament and tear their hair ; the war- riors 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 mean time, 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 picket- ing 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 Kapahos 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 Bonte volunteered to accompany the war-party, weak and ex- hausted 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. SO LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 favourable 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 victori- ous 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 ascer- tained their losses. Then the shouts of delight were con- verted 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 centre of the village, in front of the lodge of the great chief. Killbuck now learned that a scout having brought in- telligence that the two bands of Rapahos were hastening to LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 31 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 colour. 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 centre, 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, tatooed 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, bat hanging from the spear-head, the actual "totem" of the warrior it distinguished. The rattlesnake, the otter, the carcagien, the mountain badger, the war-eagle, the kon- qua-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 characterise the braves to whom they belonged. From the centre lodge, two or three medicine - men, fantastically attired in the skins of wolves and bears, and bearing long peeled w r ands of cherry in their hands, occa- sionally emerged to tend a very small fire which they had 32 LIFE IN TIIE FAR WEST. kindled in the centre 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 dress- ed 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 shoul- der, then advanced from the four sides of the square, and some, shaking a rattledrum in time with their steps, com- menced 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 ad- vanced to the centre and retreated to their former posi- tions ; 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, rais- ing 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 33 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 posses- sion 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 valour 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 " count- ing 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 ex- ploit of the day, had entitled him to the honour of count- ing 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 re- count his own high-sounding deeds. " Wagh ! " exclaimed old Killbuck, as he left the circle, c 34 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 Bontd remained during the winter ; and when the spring sun had opened the ice- bound 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 horse- man 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, driv- ing 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. 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 1 " " War-party of Rapahos passed.Squirrel at sundown yes- terday, 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 ? " LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 35 " Well, we do. But whar's your companyeros ? " " 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 hos now ; and runs some, I'm thinking." " Well, it does." " Whar's them mules from ? They look Lke Californy." " Mexican country away down south." " H ! Whar's yourself from 1 " " There away, too." " What's beaver worth in Taos ? " " Dollar." "In Saint Louiy?" " Same." H ! Any caU for buckskin ? " " A heap ! The soldiers in Santa Fe~ are half froze for leather ; and mocassins 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 appear- ance 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 36 LIFE IX THE FAR WEST. 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 weather-beaten 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 equip- ment of a double - barrelled 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 hod 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. LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 37 " Hard (loins' when it come to that," remarked La Bonte". 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 travelled 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 per- fect 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 reached (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 manip- ulation. Then, giving her a smack upon the haunch, and a "hep-a" well known to the mule kind, the old favourite 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 colour, 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 38 LIFE IX THE FAR WEST. 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. The titbits 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 mountain- eers 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 "honey- dew" tobacco of which the strange hunter had good store, PO 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 nb after rib had been * A pithy substance found in dead pine-trees. LIFE IN THE FAB WEST. 39 picked and chucked over their shoulders to the wolves, and one fore leg and t/ie "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 volun- teering 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 camp-fire, where one always remained to guard the animals, and unloading their packs of meat (all choicest portions), ate late into the night, and, smok- ing, 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 Bonte, 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 pre- vailed upon the modest trapper to " unpack " some passages in his wild adventurous life. " Maybe," commenced the mountaineer, u you both re- member 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 niggur 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 Bonte' 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 civilisation of his home, to seek the perilous but engaging life of a trapper of the Rocky Mountains. La Bonte" was raised in the state ol 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 40 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. was " some," he said, with the rifle, and always had a hankering for the West ; particularly when, on accompany- ing his father to Saint Louis every spring, he saw the dif- ferent 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 Hawkin's door (the rifle-maker of Saint Louis), and bade adieu to the cares and trammels of civilised life. However, like a thoughtless beaver-kitten, he put his foot into a trap one fine day, set by Mary Brand, a neigh- bour's daughter, and esteemed " some punkins " or, in other words, toasted as the beauty of Memphis 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 ; homminy 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." 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 striv- ing 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 ? " LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 41 " 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 Memphis 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 women 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 characterise 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 justi- fied 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 Bonte fell despe- rately 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 mocassins 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 recognised " courting " (and Americans alone know the horrors of such prolonged pur- gatory), they became, to use La Bonte's words, " awful fond," and consequently about once a- week had their tiffs and makes-up. 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 42 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. world ; and by a flirtation over the corn-cobs with big Pete, La Bont^'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 strug- gling 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 Bonte stood it as long as human nature, at boiling heat, could endure ; but when Pete, in the exulta- tion of his apparent triumph, crowned his success by en- circling the slender waist of the girl with his arm, and snatching a sudden kiss, he jumped upright from his seat, and seizing a small whisky-keg which stood in the centre 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 differ- ences between the hot-blooded youths ; and of such fre- quent occurrence and invariably bloody termination did these encounters become, that they scarcely produced suffi- cient 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 neighbour- hood, 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 Bont6 were being arranged by their respective friends. Mary, when she discovered the mischief her thoughtless- ness 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 Bonte 1 , 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. LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 43 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 shoul- der. 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 Boute'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 com- menced 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 Bonte 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. 44 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. " Mary," said he, " I'm about to break. They're hunt- ing 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 Bonte, 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 Bont4 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 excite- ments of drinking, gambling, and fighting, which form the every -day amusements of the rising 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 thirty 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 45 alongside the wharves, its well-stored warehouses, and all the bustling concomitants of a great commercial depot, they can scarcely realise 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. 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 evi- dences 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. These, nevertheless, were the men whose hardy enterprise opened to commerce and the plough the vast and fertile regions of the West. Rough and savage though they were, they were the true pioneers of that extraordinary tide of civilisation 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 plough of civilised man. To the wild and half -savage trapper, who may be said to exemplify the energy, enter- prise, and hardihood characteristic of the American people, divested of all the false and vicious glare with which a high state of civilisation, 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 be- come the most important of those confederate States com- posing the mighty union of North America. 46 LIFE IN THE FAK WEST. 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 promi- nent 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, and three thousand from the capital of the United States. 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 civilisation. There is, moreover, a large float- ing population of foreigners of all nations, who must pos- sess 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 47 scene of their adventures, wild as savages, determined to enjoy themselves, for a time, in all the gaiety and dissipa- tion 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 endeavours 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 honour 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. 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 recognised by the initkted 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-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 sal- low half-breed voyageur from the north and who, desert- ing the service of the "North- West" (the Hudson Bay 48 LIFE IN THE FAR -WEST. 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 west- ern side the mountains, who interlards his mountain jar- gon with Spanish words picked up in Taos and California. In one corner a trapper, lean and gaunt from the starving regions of the Fellow Stone, has just recognised an old campanyero, with whom he hunted years before in the perilous country of the Blackfeet. " Why, John, old hos, how do you come on ? " " What ! Meek, old 'coon ! I thought you were under ? " One from Arkansa stalks into the centre of the room, with a pack of cards in his hand and a handful of dollars in his hat. Squatting cross-legged 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 hos ? Wagh ! " Tough are the yarns of wondrous hunts and Indian perils, of hairbreadth 'scapes and curious " fixes." Tran- scendent are the qualities of sundry rifles which call these hunters masters ; " plum " is the " centre " each vaunted barrel shoots ; sufficing for a hundred wigs is the " hair " each hunter has " lifted " from Indians' scalps ; multitu- dinous 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 Bonte, on his arrival at St Louis, found himself one day in no less a place than this ; and here he made ac- quaintance 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 expedi- tion. 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 49 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 Bonte" and his companion one Luke, better known as Grey-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 Fe, and the interior of Mexico, assembled to complete their necessary equipment. Mules and oxen are purchas- ed, 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-Moun- tain 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, " hos and beaver " gone, is necessitated to hire him- self to one of the leaders of big bands, and hypothecate his D 50 LIFE IN THE FAB WEST. services for an equipment of traps and animals. Thus La Bonte 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. As they passed through the rendezvous, which was en- camped on a little stream beyond the town, even our young Mississippian was struck with the novelty of the scene. Upwards of forty huge waggons, of Conostoga and Pittsburg 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 waggons 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 " panta- loons, 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 waggons, and near them lounged wild -looking mountaineers, easily distin- guished 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 him- self 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 nptly termed by sailors and the unprofessional. * Saddle-blanket made of buffalo-calf skin. LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 51 In another part, the merchants of the caravan and the Indian traders superintended the lading of the waggons or mule -packs. They were dressed in civilised 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 undis- guised contempt, despising the very simplest forms of civilisation. The picturesque appearance of the encamp- ment was not a little heightened by the addition of several Indians from the neighbouring Shawnee settlement, who, mounted on their small active horses, on which they re- clined 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 to- wards 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 Bonte", 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 civilisation. 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 fertilise 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 beau- tiful 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 pic- turesque dells, through whicli run clear bubbling streams belted with gay-blossomed shrubs, everywhere present 52 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 inter- sect 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 civilised man ; and in every feature it is evi- dent 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 compari- son. 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 civilised man. Through this unpeopled country the United States pours her greedy thousands, to seize upon the barren territories of her feeble neighbour. Camping the first night on "Black Jack," our moun- taineers here cut each man a spare hickory wiping-stick for his rifle ; and La Bonte, 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 bar- barous 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, endeavoured to lead his mule by the rope up to the spot where he wished to deposit his pack. Mule-like, however, the more he pulled the more stubbornly she re- mained 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 wilful mulish- LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 53 ness 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 half-hitch 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, levelling 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 centre of the scalp, which is " roached " or hogged like the mane of a mule, and stands erect, plastered with un- guents, 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 contribu- tions 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. Crossing Vermilion, the trappers arrived on the fifth day at " Blue," where they encamped in the broad timber belt- ing the creek, and there awaited the arrival of the re- mainder 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 west- ward, gradually smoothed away into a vast unbroken ex- panse of rolling plain. Herds of antelope began to show themselves, and some of the hunters, leaving the trail, soon 54 LIFE IX THE FAR WEST. 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 f order'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 pre- senting 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 Bonte 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 " tender loin ; " of delicious " boudins," and marrow- bones too good to think of. La Bonte had never seen the lordly animal, and consquently but half believed the ac- counts 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 des- canted 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 65 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 sweep- ing the ground as he fed, an enormous bull was in advance of the others, his wild brilliant eyes peering from an im- mense 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 Bonte 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 con- sternation, 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 groimd 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. 66 LIFE IX THE FAR WEST. However, they now knew that they were in the country of meat ; and a few miles farther, another band of strag- glers presenting themselves, three of the hunters went in pursuit, La Bonte 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 " butcher- ing." 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 upo'i 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 Imrried to camp rejoicing. There was merry-making in the camp that night, and the way they indulged their appetites or, in their own language, " throw'd" 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 niirht," the fat- clad " depouille " saw its fleshy mass grow small by degrees and beautifully less before the trenchant blades of the hungry mountaineers ; appetising 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 comestilnlity remained, was lazily wiping the greasy knife that had done such good pervice, a skilful hunter was seen to chuckle to himself as lie raked the deep ashes of the fire, and drew therefrom a LIFE IX THE FAB WEST. 57 pair of tongues so admirably baked, so soft, so sweet, and of such exquisite flavour, that a veil is considerately drawn over the effects their discussion produced in the mind of our greenhorn La Bonte, 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 straw- berries and cream. Sweet was the digestive pipe after such a feast ; soft was the sleep and deep, which sealed the eyes of the con- tented 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 travellers across the plains, who wantonly destroy these noble animals, not even for the excitement of sport, but in cold-blooded and insane butchery. La Bonte" 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 ap- peared, whom, by their dress, he at once knew to be Paw- 58 LIFE IN T THE FAR VEST. nees 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 hesi- tated 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 Bont4, 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 out- LIFE IN THE FAR WEST 59 stretched 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 Bonte 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 Bonte" first lifted hair ! A few days later, the mountaineers reached the point where the Platte divides into two great forks : the north- ern 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 Sweet- Water creeks. The other, or " South Fork," strikes towards the mountains in a south-westerly direction, hug- ging 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, enclosed 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 for- merly frequented the neighbourhood 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, wher- ever a village has encamped, the trunks of these trees strew 60 LIFE IX THE FAR WEST. 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 everlast- ing 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 wound- ed 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 grey, the brown, and, last and least, the coyote or cayeute of the mountaineers, the " wach- rinkamdnet" 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 butcher- ing 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 grey) lope hungrily around, licking their chops in hungry expectation. Not unfrequently the hunter throws a piece of meat towards LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 61 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 moun- tains, 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 apisha- mores, eating the skin robes 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 traveller 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 mountain- eers, 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 Bonte, had started up the 62 LIFE IK THE FAR WEST. 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 Bonte 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 Bonte^ 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 ; u 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 digging 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 over- looked the camp at the distance of about six hundred yards ; and crowning this in number some forty or more, com- menced 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 defence stood the mountaineers, rifle in hand, and silent and deter- mined. The Indians presently descended the bluff on foot, LIFE IN THE PAR WEST. 63 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 Brules, and that the chief ad- vancing towards them was the well-known Tah-sha-tiihga or Bull Tail, a most friendly chief of that tribe. The ma- jority, 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 mocassins, and the way in which his face was daubed with paint. " 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 pre- paring a dog-feast to entertain their friends ? The whites were passing through his country, burning his wood, drink- ing 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 64 LIFE IN* THE FAB WEST. 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." 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, com- menced a scattering volley upon the camp of the mountain- eers. The latter reserved their fire, treating with cool in- difference 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 with- in 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 * The French Canadians are called wah-lceitcka " bad medi- cine " by the Indians, who account them treacherous and vin- dictive, and at the same time less daring than the American hunters. LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 65 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, how- ever, although intended as a mere bravado, unfortunately proved fatal to one of the whites. Gonneville, at the mo- ment, 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 Bonte 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 colour, 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 inarticxilate 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 return- ed 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 cov- ered without a word of prayer or sigh of grief ; for how- ever 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 E 66 LIFE IN TIIE FAR WEST. thought would better please the spirit of the dead man than vain regrets bloody and lasting revenge. Trampling 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 fee'd 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 trap- ping 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 mmiourned trapper met his death. La Bonte, 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 for- get so soon the comrade he had lost ; the companion iu LIFH IX THE FAR WEST. 67 the liunt or over the cheerful camp-fire ; 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 pro- gress, remained some time in the vicinity, while La Bonte, Luke, and a trapper named Marcelline, started in a few days to the mountains, to trap on Sweet Water and Medi- cine 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 sav- age who has received a portion of the spirit makes his way, with his mouth full of the liquor and cheeks distend- ed, 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 68 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 dis- tinguish 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 demoralising influence of the liquor, of demons rather than of men. CHAPTER IV. LA BONT 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 extermin- ated 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 dis- covered a few lodges, and La Bonte set his first trap. He and old Luke finding "cuttings" near the camp, followed the " sign " along the bank, until the practised eye of the latter discovered a " slide," where the beaver had ascended the bank to chop the trunk of a cotton-wood, and convey the bark to its lodge. Taking a trap from " 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 69 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." * 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 alittle 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 Bonte 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 "tender loin" or " boudin," or other meat of whatever kind he had eaten of before. The country where La Bonte and his companions were trapping is very curiously situated in the extensive bend of the Platte which encloses 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 traveller 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 neighbouring 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. * A substance obtained from a gland in the scrotum of the beaver, and used to attract that animal to the trap. 70 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 enclosed valley so called which, abounding in game, and sheltered on every side by lofty mountains, is a favourite wintering-ground of the moun- taineers. 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 w T ere 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, * The Hudson Bay Company is so called by the American trappers. LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 71 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. 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 Ib. in goods for money is seldom given in the moun- tain 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 Bonte had lost all traces of civilised humanity, and might justly claim to be con- sidered 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 abun- dant, and trapped their way westward until they came upon the famed locality of the Beer and Soda Springs 72 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 phenom- enon of the bubbling gas. Behind him were piled his saddles and a pack of skins, and at a little distance a hob- bled 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 recognised by one of La Bond'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 colour to the materials of his dress. He was at least six feet two or three in his mocassins, straight- limbed and wiry, with long arms ending in hands of tre- mendous grasp, and a quantity of straight black hair hang- ing on his shoulders. His features, which were undeniably good, wore an expression of comical gravity, never relaxing into a smile, which a broad good-humoured 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 hos," cried La Bonte, " what brings you hyar then, and camp at that ? " " This niggur," answered Rube, solemnly, " has been down'd upon a sight too often to be skeared by what can come out from them waters ; and tliar arn't a devil as liisses thar as can ' shine ' with this child, I tell you. I've tried him onest, an' font 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'." Spite of the reputed dangers of the locality, the trappers * A small lake near the head-waters of the Yellow Stone, near which are some curious thermal springs of ink-black water. LIFE IN THE FAR WE8T. 73 camped on the spot, and many a draught of the delicious sparkling water they quaffed in honour 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 invok- ing the fountain spirits, which, a perfect Indian in Ids simple heart, he implicitly believed to inhabit their mys- terious waters. When the others had, as he thought, fallen asleep, La Bont observed the ill-starred trapper take from his pouch a curiously-carved red stone pipe, which he care- fully charged with tobacco and kinnik-kinnik. Then ap- proaching 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, say- ing 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 accom- panied 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 seve- ral streams, of which the Big Bear River is the most con- siderable, this lake presents the curious phenomenon of a vast body of water without any known outlet. According 74 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 south-west ex- tremity 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 ap- peared 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 grease- wood, piled up as a sort of breakwind, in which they hud- dled 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 Bonte 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 Bonte, 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 75 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 reconnoitre, 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 examin- ing their rifles, and moved cautiously towards the Indian village. As it was scarcely light enough for their opera- tions, 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 hud- dled 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 76 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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 Bonte'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 Bonte 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, how- ever, 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 77 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, travelling on all day, were compelled to camp at night without water or pasture for their exhausted animals, and themselves raven- ous 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 miser- able state that it could not possibly have travelled six miles further. It was therefore killed, and its blood drunk, yf 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 exer- tion 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. 78 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 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, occa- sionally 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." 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 characterises 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 squattiug over another at a little distance, when Forey com- menced 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 dis- covered 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 neighbouring uplands, each taking a different direction. It was nearlv sunset when La Bon to returned to the LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 79 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, hos help yourself." La Bonte drew his knife from the scabbard, and ap- proached 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 greed- ily 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 Bonte' s other two companions, who doubt- less fell a prey to utter exhaustion, and were unable to return to the camp. And thus ended the Digger expedi- tion. It may appear almost incredible that men having civil- ised 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 unfre- quently sell to other tribes, or to each other. In these attacks neither sex nor age is spared ; and your mountain- 80 LIFE IX THE FAR WEST. eerhas 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 Blackfoot warrior. La Bonte 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 etream, 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 moun- taineers. 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 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 81 powerful man, but, notwithstanding the deadly wound the Indian had received, he had his equal in strength to con- tend 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 latter'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 tinder." 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 compan- ions, 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 differ- ent 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 F 2 LIFE IX THE FAR WEST. 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 aston- ishment that the arid and barren valley had once been peopled by a race of men far superior to the present nomade 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 colours, 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.* A Taos Indian, who was amongst the band, was evi- dently impressed with a melancholy awe as he regarded these ancient monuments of his fallen people. At mid- night 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 * 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 embrac- ing the province of New Mexico, was the locality from which they emigrated. LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 83 mouldering walls, he gazed silently around, where in ages past his ancestors trod proudly, a civilised race, the tra- dition of which, well known to his people, served but to make their present degraded position more galling and apparent. Cowering under the shadow of a crumbling wall, the Indian drew his blanket over his head, and con- jured to his mind's eye the 1'ormer power and grandeur of his race that warlike people who, forsaking their own country for causes of which no tradition, however dim, now exists, sought in the fruitful and teeming valleys of the south a soil and climate which their own lands did not afford, and, displacing the wild and barbarous hordes inhabiting the land, raised there a mighty empire, great in riches and civilisation. The Indian bowed his head, and mourned the fallen greatness of his tribe. Eising, he slowly drew his tattered blanket round his body, and prepared to leave the spot, when the shadow of a moving figure, creeping past a gap in the ruined wall through which the moonbeams played, suddenly arrested his attention. Rigid as a statue, he stood transfixed to the spot, thinking a former inhabitant of the city was visiting, in a ghostly form, the scenes his body once knew so well. The bow in his right hand shook with fear as he saw the shadow approach, but was as tightly and steadily grasped when, on the figure emerg- ing from the shade of the wall, he distinguished the form of a naked Apache, armed with bow and arrow, crawling stealthily through the gloomy ruins. Standing undiscovered within the shadow of the wall, the Taos raised his bow, and drew an arrow to the head, until the other, who was bending low to keep under cover of the wall, and thus approach the sentinel standing at a short distance, seeing suddenly the well-defined shadow on the ground, rose upright on his legs, and, knowing escape was impossible, threw his arms down his sides, and, drawing himself erect, exclaimed in a suppressed tone, " Wa-g-h ! " " Wagh ! " exclaimed the Taos likewise, but quickly dropped his arrow point, and eased the bow. 84 LIFE 1-N THE FAR WEST. " What does my brother want," he asked, " that he lopes like a wolf round the fires of the white hunters ? " M Is my brother's skin not red ? " returned the Apache, " and yet he asks a question that needs no answer. Why does the medicine-wolf follow the buffalo and deer ? For blood and for blood the Indian follows the treacherous white from camp to camp, to strike blow for blow, until the deaths of those so basely killed are fully avenged." " My brother speaks with a big heart, and his words are true ; and though the Taos and Pimo (Apache) black their faces towards each other (are at war), here, on the graves of their common fathers, there is peace between them. Let my brother go." The Apache moved quickly away, and the Taos once more sought the camp-fires of his white companions. Following the course of the Gila to the eastward, they crossed a range of the Sierra Madre, which is a continua- tion of the Rocky Mountains, and struck the waters of the Rio del Norte below the settlements of New Mexico. On this stream they fared well ; besides trapping a great quantity of beaver, game of all kinds abounded, and the bluffs near the well - timbered banks of the river were covered with rich gramma grass, on which their half- starved animals speedily improved in condition. They remained for some weeks encamped on the right bank of the stream, during which period they lost one of their number, shot with an arrow whilst lying asleep within a few feet of the camp-fire. The Navajos continually prowl along that portion of the river which runs through the settlements of New Mexico, preying upon the cowardly inhabitants, and running off with their cattle whenever they are exposed in sufficient numbers to tempt them. Whilst ascending the river, the trappers met a party of these Indians returning to their mountain homes with a large band of mules and horses, which they had taken from one of the Mexican towns, besides several women and children, whom they had cap- tured as slaves. The main body of the trappers halting, ten of the band followed and charged upon the Indians LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 85 who numbered at least sixty, killed sevon of them, and retook the prisoners and the whole cavalla