In the Old West

by George Frederick Augustus Ruxton

and polishes off the high notes with a whoop which makes the old wooden houses shake again, as it rattles and echoes down the street.

Here, over fiery "monaghahela," Jean Batiste, the sallow half-breed voyageur from the North—and who, deserting the service of the "North West" (the Hudson's Bay Company), has come down the Mississippi, from the "Falls," to try the sweets and liberty of "free" trapping—hobnobs with a stalwart leather-clad "boy," just returned from trapping on the waters of Grand River, on the western side the mountains, who interlards his mountain jargon with Spanish words picked up in Taos and California. In one corner a trapper, lean and gaunt from the starving regions of the Yellow Stone, has just recognized an old campanyero, with whom he hunted years before in the perilous country of the Blackfeet.

"Why, John, old hoss, how do you come on?"

"What! Meek, old coon! I thought you were under?"

One from Arkansa stalks into the center of the room, with a pack of cards in his hand and a handful of dollars in his hat. Squatting crosslegged on a buffalo-robe, he smacks down the money and cries out "Ho, boys! hyar's a deck, and hyar's the beaver" (rattling the coin); "who dar set his hoss? Wagh!"

Tough are the yarns of wondrous hunts and Indian perils, of hairbreadth'scapes and curious "fixes." Transcendent are the qualities of sundry rifles which call these hunters masters; "plum" is the "center" each vaunted barrel shoots; sufficing for a hundred wigs is the "hair" each hunter has "lifted" from Indians' scalps; multitudinous the "coups" he has "struck." As they drink so do they brag, first of their guns, their horses, and their squaws, and lastly of themselves: and when it comes to that, "ware steel." La Bonté, on his arrival at St. Louis, found himself one day in no less a place than this; and here he made acquaintance with an old trapper about to start for the mountains in a few days, to hunt on the head-waters of Platte and Green River. With this man he resolved to start, and, having still some hundred dollars in cash, he immediately set about equipping himself for the expedition. To effect this, he first of all visited the gun-store of Hawken, whose rifles are renowned in the mountains, and exchanged his own piece, which was of very small bore, for a regular mountain rifle. This was of very heavy metal, carrying about thirty-two balls to the pound, stocked to the muzzle, and mounted with brass; its only ornament being a buffalo bull, looking exceedingly ferocious, which was not very artistically engraved upon the trap in the stock. Here, too, he laid in a few pounds of powder and lead, and all the necessaries for a long hunt.

His next visit was to a smith's store, which smith was black by trade and black by nature, for he was a nigger, and, moreover, celebrated as being the best maker of beaver-traps in St. Louis; and of him he purchased six new traps, paying for the same twenty dollars—procuring, at the same time, an old trap-sack made of stout buffalo-skin in which to carry them.

We next find La Bonté and his companion—one Luke, better known as Gouge-Eye, one of his eyes having been "gouged" in a mountain fray—at Independence, a little town situated on the Missouri, several hundred miles above St. Louis, and within a short distance of the Indian frontier.

Independence may be termed the prairie port of the western country. Here the caravans destined for Santa Fé, and the interior of Mexico, assemble to complete their necessary equipment. Mules and oxen are purchased, teamsters hired, and all stores and outfit laid in here for the long journey over the wide expanse of prairie ocean. Here, too, the Indian traders and the Rocky-Mountain trappers rendezvous, collecting in sufficient force to insure their safe passage through the Indian country. At the seasons of departure and arrival of these bands, the little town presents a lively scene of bustle and confusion. The wild and dissipated mountaineers get rid of their last dollars in furious orgies, treating all comers to galore of drink, and pledging each other, in horns of potent whisky, to successful hunts and "heaps of beaver." When every cent has disappeared from their pouches, the free trapper often makes away with rifle, traps, and animals, to gratify his "dry" (for-your mountaineer is never "thirsty"); and then, "hoss and beaver" gone, is necessitated to hire himself to one of the leaders of big bands, and hypothecate his services for an equipment of traps and animals. Thus La Bonté picked up three excellent mules for a mere song, with their accompanying pack-saddles, apishamores, * and lariats, and the next day, with Luke, "put out" for Platte.

* Saddle-blanket made of buffalo-calf skin.