LITMIR.BIZ

CHAPTER I

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

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

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

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

      * Killed, adapted from the Indian figurative language

       ** Died.

      "Well, it did."

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

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

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

      * The Mexicans are called "Spaniards" or "Greasers" (from

       their greasy appearance) by the Western people.

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

      "He is so-o."

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

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

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

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

      "'Trav'ler, marm,' says Black

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