The boys drew closer and gazed at the old fellow with wide open eyes.
“We had about a dozen greenhorns at our post, just like yourselves. We were only a few months from the settlements and these fellows hadn’t yet got toughened to the kind of a life we had to lead. Some of ’em was about dyin’ with th’ ager, and we hadn’t a dose of medicine, or even a blessed drop of spirits to save ’em with. So, as I knew every inch of th’ country from th’ Pacific to Saint Lewy, I was ordered by th’ head trader of th’ post to go to Fort Laramie and bring back a supply of calomel, Queen Anne powders, an’ sich truck fer our sick men.”
“You had your nerve with you,” interrupted one of the boys.
“Always had plenty of that,” continued Uncle Job. “The distance was about six hundred miles over the mountains. We had come to the western side of the range the spring before, by way of the Sweet-water Valley Pass, and I concluded to take that route again toward Laramie.
“Wall, things went well with me for some time. After I got over the main ridge I kept along the south side of th’ Wind River Mountain and stopped one day on th’ Green River, in order to make me a new pair of moccasins. The rough travelling over th’ hills had worn mine out and left me barefoot. While I was stitching away at my shoes I remembered a cache (a supply of provisions hidden or stowed away until it should be convenient to remove them) which a party of us had made the spring before about a day’s travel out of my regular route. It was on the North Branch of the Sweet-water River. We had started from the head of the Platte on our way to the Columbia, with a small drove of pack-mules loaded with provisions for the new post, and when on the South Branch one of th’ creeturs give out and we had to cache the cargo. It was a package of jerked venison and a sack of flour, with a small bag of rice for th’ sick, when we had ’em, and a five gallon keg of hard cider. It is a common practice with us trappers to cache our provisions when we know they will be safe for some future journey that way.
“Wall, as I worked at my moccasins, all at once I got to be mighty thirsty, and a vision of that five gallon keg of delicious cider began to come into my head. Says I to myself, says I: ‘Job, wouldn’t you like to have a little taste of that sweet beverage, ’specially when nobody at the post would be either any wiser or any poorer for it?’ I reckoned that I would. So I finished sewing up my buckskin, an’ started next morning, bright an’ early, for the cache. Now, as I told yew all, it was one day’s journey from my route, and it would take me another day to put me on the right course again. That, you know, would use up two days that I certainly ought to give to my sick comrades at the post. But I argued this way to myself: ‘Now, I’m pesky thirsty fer a drink of that sweet cider. I’m actually feelin’ bad fer th’ want uv it. If I gratify my natural longing I’ll certainly feel better arter it, and I can then tread out so much faster that I shall more’n make up for th’ lost time.’ And that’s the way that I reconciled it to my conscience.
“Wall, I reached the South Branch in th’ middle of the afternoon, and going down the stream a little ways from where I struck it, I found the cave where we had cached our provisions. It was a pretty large one, too. I crawled into the narrow mouth of it and drew my rifle in arter me; and, as soon as my eyes got kinder used tew th’ dim light, right up there in the corner I found everything all right. There was that jolly little red keg of cider, and it seemed to actually laugh all over at the sight of an old friend. And well it might, for it had been shut up there in the dark for more’n six months with nothing but the flour, the rice, and the dried meat to keep it company.
“I pulled out my sharp-pointed bowie knife and tapped the head of th’ cider barrel in no time. But just as I raised the little fellow to get a taste of him I heard the tramping of horses’ feet outside, and the howlin’ of twenty or thirty infernal Blackfeet. Gee Whillikins! I had ter drop th’ keg before a bit of th’ amber liquid had wet my thirsty lips. Well was it that I did so, for in that moment the entrance of the place was darkened by a rascally Injun who had been fool enough to follow me. Boys! I was plum skeered!
“What was I to do? I raised my rifle and fired at Mr. Redskin, who dropped dead upon the ground, uttering a wild war-whoop as he fell. His comrades crept into the mouth of the cave, seized him by the feet, and gave a terrible yell when they found that he’d been wiped out of existence. While they were tugging away at the old fellow I busied myself in reloading my rifle in order to get ready for the next visitor. Although th’ pesky redskins kept up a terrible hullabaloo they didn’t attempt to crawl into the cave any more.