In the Old West

by George Frederick Augustus Ruxton

WE have said that La Bonté was a philosopher: he took the streaks of ill luck which checkered his mountain life with perfect carelessness, if not with stoical indifference. Nothing ruffled his danger-steeled equanimity of temper; no sudden emotion disturbed his mind. We have seen how wives were torn from him without eliciting a groan or grumble, (but such contretemps, it may be said, can scarcely find a place in the category of ills); how the loss of mules and mustangs, harried by horse-stealing Indians, left him in the ne plus ultra of mountain misery—afoot; how packs and peltries, the hard-earned beaver of his perilous hunts, were "raised" at one fell swoop by freebooting bands of savages. Hunger and thirst, we know, were commonplace sensations to the mountaineer. His storm-hardened flesh scarce felt the pinging wounds of arrow-point or bullet; and when in the midst of Indian fight, it is not probable that any tender qualms of feeling would allay the itching of his fingers for his enemy's scalp-lock, nor would any remains of civilized fastidiousness prevent his burying his knife again and again in the lifeblood of an Indian savage.

Still, in one dark corner of his heart, there shone at intervals a faint spark of what was once a fiercely-burning fire. Neither time, that corroder of all thing's, nor change, that ready abettor of oblivion, nor scenes of peril and excitement, which act as dampers to more quiet memories, could smother this little smoldering spark, which now and again—when rarely-coming calm succeeded some stirring passage in the hunter's life, and left him, for a brief time, devoid of care, and victim to his thoughts—would flicker suddenly, and light up all the nooks and corners of his rugged breast, and discover to his mind's eye that one deep-rooted memory clung there still, though long neglected; proving that, spite of time and change, of life and fortune,

"On revient toujours à ses premiers amours."

Often and often, as La Bonté sat cross-legged before his solitary camp-fire, and, pipe in mouth, watched the blue smoke curling upwards in the clear cold sky, a well-remembered form appeared to gaze upon him from the vapory wreaths. Then would old recollections crowd before him, and old emotions, long a stranger to his breast, shape themselves, as it were, into long-forgotten but now familiar pulsations. Again he felt the soft subduing influence which once, in days gone by, a certain passion exercised over his mind and body; and often a trembling seized him, the same he used to experience at the sudden sight of one Mary Brand, whose dim and dreamy apparition so often watched his lonely bed, or, unconsciously conjured up, cheered him in the dreary watches of the long and stormy winter nights.

At first he only knew that one face haunted his dreams by night, and the few moments by day when he thought of anything, and this face smiled lovingly upon him and cheered him mightily. Name he had quite forgotten, or recalled it vaguely, and, setting small store by it, had thought of it no more.

For many years after he had deserted his home, La Bonté had cherished the idea of again returning to his country. During this period he had never forgotten his old flame, and many a choice fur he had carefully laid by, intended as a present for Mary Brand; and many a gage d'amour of cunning shape and device, worked in stained quills of porcupine and bright-colored beads—the handiwork of nimble-fingered squaws—he had packed in his "possible" sack for the same destination, hoping a time would come when he might lay them at her feet.

Year after year wore on, however, and still found him, with traps and rifle, following his perilous avocation; and each succeeding one saw him more and more wedded to the wild mountain-life. He was conscious how unfitted he had become again to enter the galling harness of conventionality and civilization. He thought, too, how changed in manners and appearance he now must be, and could not believe that he would again find favor in the eyes of his quondam love, who, he judged, had long since forgotten him; and inexperienced as he was in such matters, yet he knew enough of womankind to feel assured that time and absence had long since done the work, if even the natural fickleness of woman's nature had lain dormant. Thus it was that he came to forget Mary Brand, but still remembered the all-absorbing feeling she had once created in his breast, the shadow of which still remained, and often took form and feature in the smoke-wreaths of his solitary camp-fire.

If truth be told, La Bonté had his failings as a mountaineer, and—sin unpardonable in hunter law—still possessed, in holes and corners of his breast seldom explored by his inward eye, much of the leaven of kindly human nature, which now and again involuntarily peeped out, as greatly to the contempt of his comrade trappers as it was blushingly repressed by the mountaineer himself. Thus, in his various matrimonial episodes, he treated his dusky sposas with all the consideration the sex could possibly demand from hand of man. No squaw of his ever humped shoulder to receive a castigatory and martial "lodge-poling" for offense domestic; but often has his helpmate blushed to see her pale-face lord and master devote himself to the feminine labor of packing huge piles of firewood on his back, felling trees, butchering unwieldy buffalo—all which are included in the Indian category of female duties. Thus he was esteemed an excellent parti by all the marriageable young squaws of Blackfoot, Crow, and Shoshone, of Yutah, Shian, and Arapaho; but after his last connubial catastrophe, he steeled his heart against all the charms and coquetry of Indian belles, and persevered in unblessed widowhood for many a long day.

From the point where we left him on his way to the waters of the Columbia, we must jump with him over a space of nearly two years, during which time he had a most uninterrupted run of good luck; trapping with great success on the head-streams of the Columbia and Yellow Stone—the most dangerous of trapping-ground—and finding good market for his peltries at the NorthWest posts—beaver fetching as high a price as five and six dollars a "plew"—the "golden age" of trappers, now, alas! never to return, and existing only in the fond memory of the mountaineers. This glorious time, however, was too good to last. In mountain language, "such heap of fat meat was not going to shine much longer."

La Bonté was at this time one of a band of eight trappers, whose hunting-ground was about the head-waters of the Yellow Stone, which we have before said is in the country of the Blackfeet. With him were Killbuck, Meek, Marcelline, and three others; and the leader of the party was Bill Williams, that old "hard case" who had spent forty years and more in the mountains, until he had become as tough as the parflêche soles of his moccasins? They were all good men and true, expert hunters, and well-trained mountaineers. After having trapped all the streams they were acquainted with, it was determined to strike into the mountains, at a point where old Williams affirmed, from the run of the hills, there must be plenty of water, although not one of the party had before explored the country, or knew anything of its nature, or of the likelihood of its affording game for themselves or pasture for their animals. However, they packed their peltry, and put out for the land in view—a lofty peak, dimly seen above the more regular summit of the chain, being their landmark.