CHAPTER XIV.
A Brush with the Greasers.
DICK replenished his pipe and prepared to rest, after his tale was completed, when Frank suddenly inquired:
“Dick, how came that scar on your face?”
The “scar” Frank had reference to, was an ugly-looking wen, extending entirely across the trapper’s face, and completely “spilin’ his good looks,” as he sometimes used to remark.
“That war done in a fight with some tarnal Greasers,” answered Dick. “I come mighty nigh havin’ my neck stretched that night, an’ the way it happened war this:”
After a few whiffs at his pipe, he continued:
“When our government war settlin’ our little dispute with the Mexikin Greasers, I, like a good many other trappers, thought that I should like to take a hand in the muss. I hate a Greaser wusser nor I do an Injun. So, arter a little talk, me an’ Bill jined a company o’ Rangers that war raised by an ole trapper we used to call Cap’n Steele. A’most every man in the company war a trapper or hunter, for the cap’n wouldn’t take only them as could show the claws o’ three or four grizzlies they had rubbed out, an’ as many Injun scalps.