Nat, The Trapper and Indian-Fighter

BY PAUL J. PRESCOTT.
NEW YORK: BEADLE AND ADAMS, PUBLISHERS, 98 WILLIAM STREET.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by FRANK STARR & CO., In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
Toward noon of a pleasant June day, 18—, a man, mounted on a powerful animal of the mustang breed, was riding slowly over the plain, some distance south-east of the great South Pass.
His appearance was striking. In hight he was rather more than six feet, his legs and arms being long and lank in the extreme. His eyes were small, gray and piercing, and remarkably deep-set; his face rather thin and cadaverous, the lower part being covered with a scanty growth of grizzled beard. Add to these not very handsome features a wide, though good-natured looking mouth, and a nose of extraordinary length, and he presented a startling, not to say ludicrous, appearance.
He was dressed in a suit of dun-colored deer-skin; and a close-fitting coon-skin cap, from which dangled the tail, covered his head. A long rifle, which evidently had seen considerable service, rested across the saddle-bow, and a large buckhorn-handled knife peeped from the folds of his hunting-shirt. A powder-horn slung at one side, and a small tomahawk stuck in his belt, completed his outfit.
Such was the appearance of Nathan Rogers, well known throughout that region as Wild Nat, trapper and Indian-fighter.
As he rode slowly along, his eyes bent on the ground, a superficial observer would have pronounced him in a deep reverie; but, from the suspicious glance which he frequently threw about him, it was evident that he was on the look-out for any danger that might be near.
“Gittin’ purty near noon,” he said, at last, speaking aloud, as was his habit when alone—“purty near noon, an’ I sw’ar I’m gittin’ e’ena’most famished. I shall be a mere skileton, purty shortly, ef I don’t git a leetle something in the provender line. Guess I’ll make fur thet clump of timber, an’ brile a slice of antelope.”