"The Greasers * paid for Bent's scalp, they tell me. Old St. Vrain went out of Santa Fé with a company of mountain-men, and the way they made'em sing out was slick as shootin'. He 'counted a coup,' did St. Vrain. He throwed a Pueblo as had on poor Bent's shirt. I guess he tickled that nigger's hump-ribs. Fort William ** ain't the lodge it was, an' never will be agin, now he's gone under; but St. Vrain's 'pretty much of a gentleman,' too; if he ain't, I'll be dog-gone—eh, Bill?"
* The Mexicans are called "Spaniards" or "Greasers" (from
their greasy appearance) by the Western people.
** Bent's Indian trading fort on the Arkansa.
"He is so-o."
"Chavez had his wagons along. He was only a Spaniard anyhow, and some of his teamsters put a ball into him his next trip, and made a raise of his dollars, wagh! Uncle Sam hung'em for it, I heard, but can't b'lieve it, nohow. If them Spaniards wasn't born for shootin', why was beaver made? You was with us that spree, Jemmy?"
"No sirre-e; I went out when Spiers lost his animals on Cimmaron: a hundred and forty mules and oxen was froze that night, wagh!"
"Surely Black Harris was thar; and the darndest liar was Black Harris—for lies tumbled out of his mouth like boudins out of a buffer's stomach. He was the child as saw the putrefied forest in the Black Hills. Black Harris come in from Laramie; he'd been trapping three year an' more on Platte and the other side; and, when he got into Liberty, he fixed himself right off like a Saint Louiy dandy. Well, he sat to dinner one day in the tavern, and a lady says to him—
"'Well, Mister Harris, I hear you're a great trav'ler.'
"'Trav'ler, marm,' says Black Harris, 'this nigger's no trav'ler; I ar' a trapper, marm, a mountain-man, wagh!'
"'Well, Mister Harris, trappers are great trav'lers, and you goes over a sight of ground in your perishinations, I'll be bound to say.'
"'A sight, marm, this coon's gone over, if that's the way your stick floats. * I've trapped beaver on Platte and Arkansa, and away up on Missoura and Yaller Stone; I've trapped on Columbia, on Lewis Fork, and Green River; I've trapped, marm, on Grand River and the Heely (Gila). I've fout the Blackfoot (and d———d bad Injuns they are); I've raised the hair * of more than one Apach, and made a Rapaho 'come' afore now; I've trapped in heav'n, in airth, and h——; and scalp my old head, marm, but I've seen a putrefied forest.'