"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.
* The Hudson's Bay Company, having amalgamated with the
American North-West Company, is known by the name "North-
West" to the southern trappers. Their employés usually wear
Canadian capotes.
** A spice of the devil.
"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."