tion>George Frederick Augustus Ruxton
Life in the Far West
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066182854
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I.
Away to the head waters of the Platte, where several small streams run into the south fork of that river, and head in the broken ridges of the “Divide” which separates the valleys of the Platte and 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 stripes 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 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 centre 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 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 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 “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 hunderd year ago, by a long chalk, that the biggest kind of rendezvous was held 'to' Independence, a mighty handsome little location away up on old Missoura. A pretty smart lot of boys was camp'd 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' [2] by the Spaniards at Sacramenty, or Chihuahuy, this hos doesn't know which, but he 'went under' [3] any how. Well, Sam had his train along, ready to hitch up for the Mexican country—twenty thunderin big Pittsburg waggons; 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 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 silver heels spoke true, she did: 'plum-center' she was, eh?”
“Well, she wasn't nothin else.”
“The Greasers [4] payed 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 niggur's hump-ribs. Fort William [5] aint 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 aint, I'll be dog-gone, eh, Bill?”
“He is so-o.”
“Chavez had his waggons along. He was only a Spaniard any how, 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 hunderd 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 bufler'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 travler.'
“'Travler, marm,' says Black Harris, 'this niggur's no travler; I ar' a trapper, marm, a mountain-man, wagh!'
“'Well, Mister Harris, trappers are great travlers, and you goes over a sight of ground in your perishinations, I'll be bound to say.'
“'A
