When we bought the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, in 1803, it was not from any pressing need of land, for we still had millions of fertile acres east of the Mississippi. The purchase was made to forestall complications with foreign powers, either with the arch-conqueror himself, whose ambition was supposed to be the mastery of the whole world, or with Great Britain, to which the western country was sure to fall in case France should be defeated. Possession of Louisiana was essential to our free navigation of the Mississippi.
The vast domain thus added to our boundaries was terra incognita. Aside from, its strategic importance no one knew what it was good for. So Lewis and Clark were sent out from the frontier post of St. Louis to find a route to the Pacific and to report on what the new country was like.
The only commercial asset that these explorers found which was immediately available was an abundance of fur-bearing animals. Fur may be called the gold of that period, and the news that there was plenty of it in the Rocky Mountains lured many an intrepid spirit of the border. Companies of traders proceeded at once up the Missouri to barter for peltries with the Indians.
They established posts and arranged rendezvous in remote fastnesses of the mountains where they carried on a perilous but very profitable traffic. At the same time there went into the Far West many independent adventurers to hunt and trap on their own account.
In the motley ranks of these soldiers of fortune the boldest and most romantic characters were the free trappers—those who went, as they expressed it; "on their own hook." The employees of the fur companies were under strict discipline that checked personal initiative. They were of the class who work for hire and see no compensation for an arduous life save the wages earned from their taskmasters. But the free trappers were accountable to nobody. Each of them fought his own fight and won the full fruit of his endeavors. Going alone, or in small bands who acknowledged no captain and would split up whenever the humor moved them, everyone a law unto himself and relying upon his own strong arm, they were men picked by nature for great enterprises and great deeds.
It was not love of gain for its own sake that drew the free trappers into the wilderness. To them a pack of beaver skins was a mere gambler's stake, to be squandered riotously after the fashion of Jack ashore. What did compel them to a life of endless wandering and extreme hazard was the sheer lust of adventure, and a passion for that absolute, irresponsible freedom that can be enjoyed only in a state of nature. Never in our history have there been pioneers who took greater risks than they, or endured harsher vicissitudes, or severed themselves so completely from the civilization in which they were born. Nowhere, and at no time, have men of our race been thrown more upon their individual resources in unknown regions, and through periods of great peril, nor have there ever been characters more fitly developed to stand such strain.
Cut off from the repressing and refining influences of civilization, forever warring with this Indian tribe and cohabiting with that, it was inevitable that most of these men should revert toward the status of white barbarians. And yet it would be a grave error, an injustice, to rate them with mere renegades and desperadoes. The trapper, whatever his faults, was still every inch a man. Bravest of the brave, yet cool and sagacious in the strategy of border war, capable in any emergency, faithful to his own code of honor, generous without limit to everyone but his foes, loyal to the death, frankly contemptuous of luxury and caste and affectation, imperial in his self-respect but granting equal rights to others, there was something heroic in this fierce and uncouth figure who dominated for a time the vast plains and mountains of the wild West. And it should not be forgotten that the early traders and trappers performed an indispensable service to their country that no other men of their time were able, or at least willing, to do: they were the explorers, the trail-makers, for western civilization.
General Chittenden, our first authority on the history of the fur trade, says of the mountain men: "It was the roving trader and the solitary trapper who first sought out these inhospitable wilds, traced the streams to their sources, scaled the mountain passes, and explored a boundless expanse of territory where the foot of the white man had never trodden before. The Far West became a field of romantic adventure, and developed a class of men who loved the wandering career of the native inhabitant rather than the toilsome lot of the industrious colonist. The type of life thus developed, though essentially evanescent, and not representing any profound national movement, was a distinct and necessary phase in the growth of this new country. Abounding in incidents picturesque and heroic, its annals inspire an interest akin to that which belongs to the age of knight-errantry. For the free hunter of the Far West was, in his rough way, a good deal of a knight-errant. Caparisoned in the wild attire of the Indian, and armed cap-a-pie for instant combat, he roamed far and wide over deserts and mountains, gathering the scattered wealth of those regions, slaying ferocious beasts and savage men, and leading a life in which every footstep was beset with enemies and every moment pregnant of peril. The great proportion of these intrepid spirits who laid down their lives in that far country is impressive proof of the jeopardy of their existence. All in all, the period of this adventurous business may justly be considered the romantic era of the history of the West....
"It was the trader and trapper who first explored and established the routes of travel which are now, and always will be, the avenues of commerce in that region. They were the 'pathfinders' of the West, and not those later official explorers whom posterity so recognizes. No feature of western geography was ever discovered by Government explorers after 1840. Everything was already known, and had been for fully a decade. It is true that many features, like the Yellowstone wonderland, with which these restless rovers were familiar, were afterward forgotten and were re-discovered in later years; but there has never been a time until very recently when the geography of the West was so thoroughly understood as it was by the trader and trapper from 1830 to 1840.
"This minute knowledge was of practical use in many ways. When Brigham Young selected the valley of Great Salt Lake as the future home of his people, he did so largely upon information derived from the traders. When the War with Mexico came, the military forces of the United States invaded New Mexico under the guidance of men who knew every trail and mountain pass better than the most thorough reconnaissance could have taught them. When the national troops appeared before the gates of Santa Fé they were met by a people who had already been virtually won to the American cause through long intercourse with the traders. When the rush of emigration to California and Oregon followed, the emigrants found a highway across the continent already established. When the Government entered in earnest upon the work of exploration, it was the veteran mountaineer who was always sought to do service as guide."
It is most unfortunate that there exists in American literature no intimate and vivid account of the western hunters and trappers by one who had shared their camps and accompanied them on trail and warpath. We have many stories of their exploits, written in narrative form, with scarce any dialogue or characterization. The men themselves figure in such stories as little more than lay figures in a historical museum. It is one thing to describe events; it is another thing to make the actors in those events live and speak in the reader's presence. Generally the contemporary annals of the fur trade are as dry as a ship's log-book. The participants in those stirring scenes could not write, and the men of their time who could write lacked the experience.
What American authors failed to do was accomplished by a young English sportsman and explorer who lived among the trappers as one of themselves and acquired their point of view. Although not a professional writer, he was blest with a knack of putting his experiences, and those of his companions, so clearly before his readers that one can visualize both men and deeds without conscious effort. This man was George Frederick Ruxton, formerly a lieutenant in her Majesty's 89th Regiment.
In Blackwood's Magazine of 1848 there appeared a serial by Ruxton entitled "Life in the Far West." This story excited so much interest that it was reprinted in book form, and went through two editions. These are out of print, and so the work is practically unknown to our reading public.
"Life in the Far West" * is written in the form of a thinly veiled romance; but the actors were real, the incidents were real, and they were strung together in a connected plot simply because that was the most effective way to show character in action. The story is not history, of course, but neither is it fable. Nearly every page gives convincing evidence of the author's intimate personal knowledge of the scenes and characters portrayed. He had scoured the continent from Canada to Mexico, from the Mississippi to the Pacific coast. He had associated with many redoubtable characters of the old West—with men like Kit Carson, Bill Williams, the Bents, the Sublettes, Joe Meek, St. Vrain, Fitzpatrick, Killbuck, and La Bonté. Pie was equally at home among Americans, Canadians, Creoles, Mexicans, Spanish Californians, and Indians. Each of these picturesque types he has shown to the life. No narrative or formal history of that time has described the pioneers of the Far West with such actual truth and fidelity.
The wildness of the adventures related by Ruxton led many readers to suspect that they were mere romance. The author replied, in a letter to his publishers:—
"I think it would be well to correct a misapprehension as to the truth or fiction of the paper. It is no fiction. There is no incident in it which has not actually occurred, nor one character who is not well known in the Rocky Mountains, with the exception of two whose names are changed." Fully half of the names of Americans mentioned in his book can be identified today with the men who bore them. Again he wrote:—
"I have brought out a few more softening traits in the characters of the mountaineers—but not at the sacrifice of truth—for some of them have their good points; which, as they are rarely allowed to rise to the surface, must be laid hold of at once before they sink again. Killbuck—that 'old hoss' par exemple, was really pretty much of a gentleman, as was La Bonté. Bill Williams, another 'hard case,' and Rube Herring, were 'some' too.
"The scene where La Bonté joins the Chase family is so far true, that he did make a sudden appearance; but, in reality, a day before the Indian attack. The Chases (and I wish I had not given the proper name *) did start for the Platte alone, and were stampeded upon the waters of the Platte.
"The Mexican fandango is true to the letter. It does seem difficult to understand how they contrived to keep their knives out of the hump-ribs of the mountaineers; but how can you account for the fact, that, the other day, 4000 Mexicans, with 13 pieces of artillery, behind strong intrenchments and two lines of parapets, were routed by 900 raw Missourians; 300 killed, as many more wounded, all their artillery captured, as well as several hundred prisoners; and that not one American was killed in the affair? This is positive fact.
"I myself, with three trappers, cleared a fandango at Taos, armed only with bowie-knives—some score Mexicans, at least, being in the room.
"With regard to the incidents of Indian attacks, starvation, cannibalism, &c., I have invented not one out of my own head. They are all matters of history in the mountains; but I have no doubt jumbled the dramatis persono one with another, and may have committed anachronisms." Scholars may detect some inaccuracies here and there, such as scarcely could be avoided by one who wrote, as we may say, in the saddle; but these detract nothing from the essential verity of the book. Ruxton's purpose was not to write a chronicle, but to exhibit vividly the mountain men and the natives in relation to their environment. If he wrought disconnected incidents into a continuous story, and staged men together who may have been a thousand miles apart at the time, it was only because, to this extent, "fiction is the most convincing way of telling the truth."
As the author of this book was himself a true knight of the wilderness whose brief life was filled with thrilling adventures, we append the following memoir by one of his friends:—
"The London newspapers of October, 1848, contained the mournful tidings of the death, at St. Louis on the Mississippi, and at the early age of twenty-eight, of Lieutenant George Frederick Ruxton, formerly of her Majesty's 89th Regiment, the author of the following sketches:
"Many men, even in the most enterprising periods of our history, have been made the subjects of elaborate biography with far less title to the honor than this lamented young officer. Time was not granted him to embody in a permanent shape a tithe of his personal experiences and strange adventures in three quarters of the globe. Considering, indeed, the amount of physical labor he underwent, and the extent of the fields over which his wanderings spread, it is almost surprising he found leisure to write so much.
"At the early age of seventeen, Mr. Ruxton quitted Sandhurst, to learn the practical part of a soldier's profession in the civil wars of Spain. He obtained a commission in a squadron of lancers then attached to the division of General Diego Leon, and was actively engaged in several of the most important combats of the campaign. For his marked gallantry on these occasions he received from Queen Isabella II. the cross of the first class of the Order of St. Fernando, an honor which has seldom been awarded to one so young.
"On his return from Spain he found himself gazetted to a commission in the 89th Regiment; and it was whilst serving with that distinguished corps in Canada that he first became acquainted with the stirring scenes of Indian life, which he has since so graphically portrayed. His eager and enthusiastic spirit soon became wearied with the monotony of the barrack-room; and, yielding to that impulse which in him was irresistibly developed, he resigned his commission, and directed his steps towards the stupendous wilds tenanted only by the Red Indian, or by the solitary American trapper.
"Those familiar with Mr. Ruxton's writings cannot fail to have remarked the singular delight with which he dwells upon the recollections of this portion of his career, and the longing which he carried with him, to the hour of his death, for a return to those scenes of primitive freedom. 'Although liable to an accusation of barbarism,' he writes, 'I must confess that the very happiest moments of my life have been spent in the wilderness of the Far West; and I never recall but with pleasure the remembrance of my solitary camp in the Bayou Salade, with no friend near me more faithful than my rifle, and no companions more sociable than my good horse and mules, or the attendant cayute which nightly serenaded us. With a plentiful supply of dry pine-logs on the fire, and its cheerful blaze streaming far up into the sky, illuminating the valley far and near, and exhibiting the animals, with well-filled bellies, standing contentedly at rest over their picket-fire, I would sit cross-legged, enjoying the genial warmth, and, pipe in mouth, watch the blue smoke as it curled upwards, building castles in its vapory wreaths, and, in the fantastic shapes it assumed, peopling the solitude with figures of those far away. Scarcely, however, did I ever wish to change such hours of freedom for all the luxuries of civilized life; and unnatural and extraordinary as it may appear, yet such is the fascination of the life of the mountain hunter, that I believe not one instance could be adduced of even the most polished and civilized of men, who had once tasted the sweets of its attendant liberty, and freedom from every worldly care, not regretting the moment when he exchanged it for the monotonous life of the settlements, nor sighing and sighing again once more to partake of its pleasures and allurements.'
"On his return to Europe from the Far West, Mr. Ruxton, animated with a spirit as enterprising and fearless as that of Raleigh, planned a scheme for the exploration of Central Africa, which was thus characterized by the President of the Royal Geographical Society, in his anniversary address for 1845: 'To my great surprise, I recently conversed with an ardent and accomplished youth, Lieutenant Ruxton, late of the 89th Regiment, who had formed the daring project of traversing Africa in the parallel of the southern tropic, and has actually started for this purpose. Preparing himself by previous excursions on foot in North Africa and Algeria, he sailed from Liverpool early in December last, in the Royalist, for Ichaboe. From that spot he was to repair to Walvish Bay, where we have already mercantile establishments. The intrepid traveler had received from the agents of these establishments such favorable accounts of the nations towards the interior, as also of the nature of the climate, that he has the most sanguine hopes of being able to penetrate to the central region, if not of traversing it to the Portuguese colonies of Mozambique. If this be accomplished, then indeed will Lieutenant Ruxton have acquired for himself a permanent name among British travelers, by making us acquainted with the nature of the axis of the great continent of which we possess the southern extremity.'
"In pursuance of this hazardous scheme, Ruxton, with a single companion, landed on the coast, of Africa, a little to the south of Ichaboe, and commenced his journey of exploration. But it seemed as if both nature and man had combined to baffle the execution of his design. The course of their travel lay along a desert of moving sand, where no water was to be found, and little herbage, save a coarse tufted grass and twigs of the resinous myrrh. The immediate place of their destination was Angra Peguena, on the coast, described as a frequented station, but which in reality was deserted. One ship only was in the offing when the travelers arrived, and to their inexpressible mortification they discovered that she was outward bound. No trace was visible of the river or streams laid down in the maps as falling into the sea at this point, and no resource was left to the travelers save that of retracing their steps—a labor for which their strength was hardly adequate. But for the opportune assistance of a body of natives, who encountered them at the very moment when they were sinking from fatigue and thirst, Ruxton and his companion would have been added to the long catalogue of those whose lives have been sacrificed in the attempt to explore the interior of that fatal country.
"The jealousy of the traders, and of the missionaries settled on the African coast, who constantly withheld or perverted that information which was absolutely necessary for the successful prosecution of the journey, induced Ruxton to abandon the attempt for the present. He made, however, several interesting excursions towards the interior, and more especially in the country of the Bosjesmans.
"Finding his own resources inadequate for the accomplishment of his favorite project, Mr. Ruxton, on his return to England, made application for Government assistance. But though this demand was not altogether refused, it having been referred to the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, and favorably reported upon by that body, so many delays interposed that Ruxton, in disgust, resolved to withdraw from the scheme, and to abandon the field of African research which he had already contemplated from its borders.
"He next bent his steps to Mexico; and, fortunately, has presented to the world his reminiscences of that country, in one of the most fascinating volumes which of late years has issued from the press.
"It would however appear that the African scheme, the darling project of his life, had again recurred to him at a later period; for in the course of the present spring, before setting out on that journey which was destined to be his last, the following expressions occur in one of his letters:—"'My movements are uncertain, for I am trying to get up a yacht voyage to Borneo and the Indian Archipelago; have volunteered to Government to explore Central Africa; and the Aborigenes Protection Society wish me to go out to Canada to organize the Indian tribes; whilst, for my own part and inclination, I wish to go to all parts of the world at once.'
"His last letter, written just before his departure from England, a few weeks previous to his death, will hardly be read by anyone who ever knew the writer without a tear of sympathy for the sad fate of this fine young man, dying miserably in a strange land, before he had well commenced the hazardous journey whose excitement and dangers he so joyously anticipated:—
"'As you say, human nature can't go on feeding on civilized fixings in this big village; and this child has felt like going west for many a month, being "half froze for buffler-meat and mountain doin's." My route takes me via New York, the Lakes, and St. Louis, to Fort Leavenworth or Independence, on the Indian frontier. Thence, packing my "possibles" on a mule, and mounting a buffalo horse (Panchito, if he is alive), I strike the Santa Fé trail to the Arkansa, away up that river to the mountains, winter in the Bayou Salade, where Killbuck and La Bonté joined the Yutes, cross the mountains next spring to Great Salt Lake—and that's far enough to look forward to—always supposing my hair is not lifted by Comanche or Pawnee on the scalping route of the Coon Creeks and Pawnee Fork.'
"Poor fellow! he spoke lightly, in the buoyancy of youth and a confident spirit, of the fate he little thought to meet, but which too surely overtook him—not indeed by Indian blade, but by the no less deadly stroke of disease. Another motive, besides that love of rambling and adventure which, once conceived and indulged, is so difficult to eradicate, impelled him across the Atlantic. He had for some time been out of health at intervals, and he thought the air of his beloved prairies would be efficacious to work a cure. In a letter to a friend, in the month of May last, he thus referred to the probable origin of the evil:—
"'I have been confined to my room for many days, from the effects of an accident I met with in the Rocky Mountains, having been spilt from the bare back of a mule, and falling on the sharp picket of an Indian lodge on the small of my back. I fear I injured my spine, for I have never felt altogether the thing since, and, shortly after I saw you, the symptoms became rather ugly. However, I am now getting round again.'
"His medical advisers shared his opinion that he had sustained internal injury from this ugly fall; and it is not improbable that it was the remote, but real cause of his dissolution. From whatsoever this ensued, it will be a source of deep and lasting regret to all who ever enjoyed opportunities of appreciating the high and sterling qualities of George Frederick Ruxton. Few men, so prepossessing on first acquaintance, gained so much by being better known. With great natural abilities and the most dauntless bravery, he united a modesty and gentleness peculiarly pleasing.
"Had he lived, and resisted his friends' repeated solicitations to abandon a roving life and settle down in England, there can be little doubt that he would have made his name eminent on the lists of those daring and persevering men, whose travels in distant and dangerous lands have accumulated for England, and for the world, so rich a store of scientific and general information. And although the few words it has been thought right and becoming here to devote to his memory, will doubtless be more particularly welcome to his personal friends, we are persuaded that none will peruse without interest this brief tribute to the merits of a gallant soldier and accomplished English gentleman."
In the present edition no liberties have been taken with the text except by correcting a few obvious errors, and making the spelling conform to American usage. Footnotes by the present editor are marked (Ed); those unsigned are by Ruxton himself.
One useful purpose that this book may serve is to give professional hunters and trappers their due as hard working men. From time immemorial it has been the fashion to look down upon their ilk as lazy vagabonds "too trifling to work for a living." Such is the almost universal opinion of people who never have taken a big game hunt themselves, never even have seen hunters at work in the wilderness, but know them only as they take their well-earned ease after an exhausting chase.
"The lazy hunter" is the most misjudged of men; for really there is no harder labor than the pursuit of wild animals for a livelihood. The libelous epithet perhaps came in vogue from the fact that hunting and trapping are apt to unfit a man for settled habits of industry. Or it may have come from observing the whole-souled enjoyment with which the hunter pursues his occupation. We have not yet got rid of the Puritan notion that no effort is worthy unless it is painful to the spirit. The freeman of the woods calls his labor sport, and he laughs, in retrospect, at all the cruel toil, the starving and freezing and broken bones. Being utterly independent he seldom does things that "go against the grain," save as he is driven by necessity. But how sharp was the lash of that necessity, how often it stung body and soul, how many a hunter "went under," even in the old days when game was in the greatest abundance, is shown with perfect fidelity to truth in this picture of "Life in the Far West."
Horace Kephart.
AWAY to the head-waters of the Platte, where several small streams run into the south fork of that river, and head in the broken ridges of the "Divide" which separates the valleys of the Platte and the Arkansa, were camped a band of trappers on a creek called Bijou. It was the month of October, when the early frosts of the coming winter had crisped and dyed with sober brown the leaves of the cherry and quaking ash belting the brooks; and the ridges and peaks of the Rocky Mountains were already covered with a glittering mantle of snow, sparkling in the still powerful rays of the autumn sun.
The camp had all the appearance of permanency; for not only did it comprise one or two unusually comfortable shanties, but the numerous stages on which huge strips of buffalo-meat were hanging in process of cure, showed that the party had settled themselves here in order to lay in a store of provisions, or, as it is termed in the language of the mountains, "to make meat." Round the camp fed twelve or fifteen mules and horses, their fore-legs confined by hobbles of rawhide; and, guarding these animals, two men paced backwards and forwards, driving in the stragglers, ascending ever and anon the bluffs which overhung the river, and leaning on their long rifles, whilst they swept with their eyes the surrounding prairie. Three or four fires burned in the encampment, at some of which Indian women carefully tended sundry steaming pots; whilst round one, which was in the center of it, four or five stalwart hunters, clad in buckskin, sat cross-legged, pipe in mouth.
They were a trapping party from the north fork of Platte, on their way to wintering-ground in the more southern valley of the Arkansa; some, indeed, meditating a more extended trip, even to the distant settlements of New Mexico, the paradise of mountaineers. The elder of the company was a tall gaunt man, with a face browned by twenty years' exposure to the extreme climate of the mountains; his long black hair, as yet scarcely tinged with gray, hanging almost to his shoulders, but his cheeks and chin clean shaven, after the fashion of the mountain-men. His dress was the usual hunting-frock of buckskin, with long fringes down the seams, with pantaloons similarly ornamented, and moccasins of Indian make. Whilst his companions puffed their pipes in silence, he narrated a few of his former experiences of western life; and whilst the buffalo hump-ribs and tenderloin are singing away in the pot, preparing for the hunters' supper, we will note down the yarn as it spins from his lips, giving it in the language spoken in the "Far West":—
"'Twas about calf-time, maybe a little later, and not a hundred year ago by a long chalk, that the biggest kind of rendezvous was held 'to' to Independence, a mighty handsome little location away up on old Missoura. A pretty smart lot of boys was camped thar, about a quarter from the town, and the way the whisky flowed that time was some now, I can tell you. Thar was old Sam Owins—him as got rubbed out * by the Spaniards at Sacramenty, or Chihuahuy, this hoss doesn't know which, but he went under ** anyhow. Well, Sam had his train along, ready to hitch up for the Mexican country—twenty thunderin' big Pittsburgh wagons; and the way his Santa Fé boys took in the liquor beat all—eh, Bill?"
"Well, it did."
"Bill Bent—his boys camped the other side the trail, and they was all mountain-men, wagh!—and Bill Williams, and Bill Tharpe (the Pawnees took his hair on Pawnee Fork last spring): three Bills, and them three's all gone under. Surely Hatcher went out that time; and, adapted from the Indian figurative language, wasn't Bill Garey along, too? Didn't him and Chabonard sit in camp for twenty hours at a deck of euker? Them was Bent's Indian traders up on Arkansa. Poor Bill Bent! them Spaniards made meat of him. He lost his topknot to Taos. A clever man was Bill Bent as I ever know'd trade a robe or throw a bufler in his tracks. Old St. Vrain could knock the hind-sight off him though, when it came to shootin', and old Silverheels spoke true, she did: 'plumcenter' she was, eh?"
"Well, she wasn't nothin' else."
"The Greasers * paid for Bent's scalp, they tell me. Old St. Vrain went out of Santa Fé with a company of mountain-men, and the way they made'em sing out was slick as shootin'. He 'counted a coup,' did St. Vrain. He throwed a Pueblo as had on poor Bent's shirt. I guess he tickled that nigger's hump-ribs. Fort William ** ain't the lodge it was, an' never will be agin, now he's gone under; but St. Vrain's 'pretty much of a gentleman,' too; if he ain't, I'll be dog-gone—eh, Bill?"
"He is so-o."
"Chavez had his wagons along. He was only a Spaniard anyhow, and some of his teamsters put a ball into him his next trip, and made a raise of his dollars, wagh! Uncle Sam hung'em for it, I heard, but can't b'lieve it, nohow. If them Spaniards wasn't born for shootin', why was beaver made? You was with us that spree, Jemmy?"
"No sirre-e; I went out when Spiers lost his animals on Cimmaron: a hundred and forty mules and oxen was froze that night, wagh!"
"Surely Black Harris was thar; and the darndest liar was Black Harris—for lies tumbled out of his mouth like boudins out of a buffer's stomach. He was the child as saw the putrefied forest in the Black Hills. Black Harris come in from Laramie; he'd been trapping three year an' more on Platte and the other side; and, when he got into Liberty, he fixed himself right off like a Saint Louiy dandy. Well, he sat to dinner one day in the tavern, and a lady says to him—
"'Well, Mister Harris, I hear you're a great trav'ler.'
"'Trav'ler, marm,' says Black Harris, 'this nigger's no trav'ler; I ar' a trapper, marm, a mountain-man, wagh!'
"'Well, Mister Harris, trappers are great trav'lers, and you goes over a sight of ground in your perishinations, I'll be bound to say.'
"'A sight, marm, this coon's gone over, if that's the way your stick floats. * I've trapped beaver on Platte and Arkansa, and away up on Missoura and Yaller Stone; I've trapped on Columbia, on Lewis Fork, and Green River; I've trapped, marm, on Grand River and the Heely (Gila). I've fout the Blackfoot (and d———d bad Injuns they are); I've raised the hair * of more than one Apach, and made a Rapaho 'come' afore now; I've trapped in heav'n, in airth, and h——; and scalp my old head, marm, but I've seen a putrefied forest.'
"'La, Mister Harris, a what?'
"'A putrefied forest, marm, as sure as my rifle's got hind-sights, and she shoots center. I was out on the Black Hills, Bill Sublette knows the time—the year it rained fire—and everybody knows when that was. If thar wasn't cold doins about that time, this child wouldn't say so. The snow was about fifty foot deep, and the bufler lay dead on the ground like bees after a beein'; not whar we was tho', for thar was no bufler, and no meat, and me and my band had been livin' on our moccasins (leastwise the parflesh **) for six weeks; and poor doins that feedin' is, marm, as you'll never know. One day we crossed a canyon and over a divide, and got into a peraira, whar was green grass, and green trees, and green leaves on the trees, and birds singing in the green leaves, and this in Febrary, wagh! Our animals was like to die when they see the green grass, and we all sung out, "Hurraw for summer doins."
"'"Hyar goes for meat," says I, and I jest ups old Ginger at one of them singing-birds, and down come the crittur elegant; its darned head spinning away from the body, but never stops singing; and when I takes up the meat, I finds it stone, wagh! "Hyar's damp powder and no fire to dry it," I says, quite skeared.
"'"Fire be dogged," says old Rube. "Hyar's a hoss, as'll make fire come," and with that he takes his axe and lets drive at a cotton wood. Schr-u-k—goes the axe agin the tree, and out comes a bit of the blade as big as my hand. We looks at the animals, and thar they stood shaking over the grass, which I'm dog-gone if it wasn't stone, too. Young Sublette comes up, and he'd been clerking down to the fort on Platte, so he know'd something. He looks and looks, and scrapes the trees with his butcher knife, and snaps the grass like pipe-stems, and breaks the leaves a-snappin' like Californy shells.
"'"What's all this, boy?" I asks.
"'"Putrefactions," says he, looking smart; "putrefactions, or I'm a nigger."'
"'La, Mister Harris,' says the lady, 'putrefactions! why, did the leaves and the trees and the grass smell badly?'
"'Smell badly, marm!' says Black Harris; 'would a skunk stink if he was froze to stone? No, marm, this child didn't know what putrefaction was, and young Sublette's varsion wouldn't shine nohow, so I chips a piece out of a tree and puts it in my trap-sack, and carries it in safe to Laramie. Well, old Captain Stewart (a clever man was that, though he was an Englishman), he comes along next spring, and a Dutch doctor chap was along too. I shows him the piece I chipped out of the tree, and he called it a putrefaction too; and so, marm, if that wasn't a putrefied peraira, what was it? For this hoss doesn't know, and he knows fat cow from poor bull, anyhow.'
"Well, old Black Harris is gone under too, I believe. He went to the Parks trapping with a Vide Poche Frenchman, who shot him for his bacca and traps. Darn them Frenchmen, they're no account any way you lays your sight. (Any bacca in your bag, Bill? this beaver feels like chawing.)
"Well, anyhow, thar was the camp, and they was goin' to put out the next morning; and the last as come out of Independence was that ar Englishman. He'd a nor-west * capote on, and a two-shoot gun rifled. Well, them English are darned fools; they can't fix a rifle any ways; but that one did shoot some; leastwise he made it throw plum-center. He made the bufler come, he did, and fout well at Pawnee Fork too. What was his name? All the boys called him Cap'en, and he got his fixings from old Choteau; but what he wanted out thar in the mountains, I never jest rightly know'd. He was no trader, nor a trapper, and flung about his dollars right smart. Thar was old grit in him, too, and a hair of the black b'ar at that. ** They say he took the bark off the Shians when he cleared out of the village with old Beavertail's squaw. He'd been on Yaller Stone afore that: Leclerc know'd him in the Blackfoot, and up in the Chippeway country; and he had the best powder as ever I flashed through life, and his gun was handsome, that's a fact. Them thar locks was grand; and old Jake Hawken's nephey (him as trapped on Heeley that time) told me, the other day, as he saw an English gun on Arkansa last winter as beat all off hand.
"Nigh upon two hundred dollars I had in my possibles, when I went to that camp to see the boys afore they put out; and you know, Bill, as I sat to euchre and seven up till every cent was gone.
"'Take back twenty, old coon,' says Big John.
"'H—'s full of such takes back,' says I; and I puts back to town and fetches the rifle and the old mule, puts my traps into the sack, gets credit for a couple of pounds of powder at Owin's store, and hyar I ar on Bijou, with half a pack of beaver, and running meat yet, old hoss; so put a log on, and let's have a smoke.
"Hurraw, Jake, old coon, bear a hand, and let the squaw put them tails in the pot; for sun's down, and we'll have to put out pretty early to reach Black Tail by this time to-morrow. Who's fust guard, boys? them cussed Rapahos will be after the animals to-night, or I'm no judge of Injun sign. How many did you see, Maurice?"
"Enfant de gârce, me see bout honderd, when I pass Squirrel Creek, one dam water-party, parceque they no hosses, and have de lariats for steal des animaux. Maybe de Yutas in Bayou Salade."
"We'll be having trouble to-night, I'm thinking, if the devils are about. Whose band was it, Maurice?"
"Slim-Face—I see him ver close—is out; mais I think it White Wolf's."
"White Wolf, maybe, will lose his hair if he and his band knock round here too often. That Injun put me afoot when we was out on Sandy that fall. This nigger owes him one, anyhow."
"H——'s full of White Wolves: go ahead, and roll out some of your doins across the plains that time."
"You seed sights that spree, eh, boy?"
"Well, we did. Some of 'em got their flints fixed this side of Pawnee Fork, and a heap of mule-meat went wolfing. Just by Little Arkansa we saw the first Injun. Me and young Somes was ahead for meat, and I had hobbled the old mule and was approaching some goats, * when I see the critturs turn back their heads and jump right away from me. 'Hurraw, Dick!' I shouts, 'hyar's brown-skin acomin', and off I makes for the mule. The young greenhorn sees the goats runnin' up to him, and not being up to Injun ways, blazes at the first and knocks him over. Jest then seven darned red heads top the bluff, and seven Pawnees come a-screechin' upon us. I cuts the hobbles and jumps on the mule, and, when I looks back, there was Dick Somes ramming a ball down his gun like mad, and the Injuns flinging their arrows at him pretty smart, I tell you.
'Hurraw, Dick, mind your hair,' and I ups old Greaser and let one Injun 'have it,' as was going plum into the boy with his lance. He turned on his back handsome, and Dick gets the ball down at last, blazes away, and drops another. Then we charged on 'em, and they clears off like runnin' cows; and I takes the hair off the heads of the two we made meat of; and I do b'lieve thar's some of them scalps on my old leggings yet.
"Well, Dick was as full of arrows as a porky-pine; one was sticking right through his cheek, one in his meat-bag, and two more 'bout his hump-ribs. I tuk'em all out slick, and away we go to camp (for they was jost a-campin' when we went ahead), and carryin' the goat too. Thar was a hurroo when we rode in with the scalps at the end of our guns. 'Injuns! Injuns!' was the cry from the greenhorns; 'we'll be 'tacked to-night, that's certain.'
"''Tacked be————. says old Bill; 'ain't we men too, and white at that? Look to your guns, boys; send out a strong hoss-guard with the animals, and keep your eyes skinned.'
"Well, as soon as the animals were unhitched from the wagons, the guvner sends out a strong guard, seven boys, and old hands at that. It was pretty nigh upon sundown, and Bill had just sung out to corral. The boys were drivin' in the animals, and we were all standing round to get'em in slick, when, 'howgh-owgh-owgh-owgh,' we hears right behind the bluff, and 'bout a minute and a perfect crowd of Injuns gallops down upon the animals. Wagh! warn't thar hoopin'! We jump for the guns, but before we get to the fires, the Injuns were among the cavayard. I saw Ned Collyer and his brother, who were in the hoss-guard, let drive at'em; but twenty Pawnees were round'em before the smoke cleared from their rifles; and when the crowd broke, the two boys were on the ground and their hair gone. Well, that ar Englishman just saved the cavayard. He had his horse, a regular buffalo-runner, picketed round the fire quite handy, and as soon as he sees the fix, he jumps upon her and rides right into the thick of the mules, and passes through'em, firing his two-shoot gun at the Injuns; and, by gor, he made two come. The mules, which was a-snortin' with funk and running before the Injuns, as soon as they see the Englishman's mare (mules'll go to h—— after a horse, you all know), followed her right into the Corral, and thar they was safe. Fifty Pawnees came screechin' after'em, but we was ready that time, and the way we throw'd'em was something handsome, I tell you. But three of the hoss-guard got skeared—leastwise their mules did, and carried'em off into the peraira, and the Injuns, having enough of us, dashed after 'em right away. Them poor devils looked back miserable now, with about a hundred red varmints tearin' after their hair, and whooping like mad. Young Jem Bulcher was the last; and when he seed it was no use, and his time was nigh, he throw'd himself off the mule, and standing as upright as a hickory wiping-stick, he waves his hand to us, and blazes away at the first Injun as come up, and dropped him slick; but the moment after, you may guess, he died.
"We could do nothin', for, before our guns were loaded, all three were dead and their scalps gone. Five of our boys got rubbed out that time, and seven Injuns lay wolf's meat, while a many more went away gut-shot, I'll lay. Hows'ever, five of us went under, and the Pawnees made a raise of a dozen mules, wagh!"
Thus far, in his own words, we have accompanied the old hunter in his tale; and probably he would have taken us, by the time that the Squaw Chilipat had pronounced the beaver-tails cooked, safely across the grand prairies—fording Cotton Wood, Turkey Creek, Little Arkansa, Walnut Creek, and Pawnee Fork—passed the fireless route of the Coon Creeks, through a sea of fat buffalo-meat, without fuel to cook it; have struck the big river, and, leaving at the Crossing the wagons destined for Santa Fé, have trailed us up the Arkansa to Bent's Fort; thence up Boiling Spring, across the divide over to the southern fork of the Platte, away up to the Black Hills, and finally camped us, with hair still preserved, in the beaver-abounding valleys of the Sweet Water, and Cache la Poudre, under the rugged shadow of the Wind River Mountains; if it had not so happened, at this juncture, as all our mountaineers sat cross-legged round the fire, pipe in mouth, and with Indian gravity listened to the yarn of the old trapper, interrupting him only with an occasional wagh! or with the exclamations of some participator in the events then under narration, who would every now and then put in a corroborative,—"This child remembers that fix," or, "hyar's a nigger lifted hair that spree," &c.—that a whizzing noise was heard in the air, followed by a sharp but suppressed cry from one of the hunters.
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