Mr. Winters, Archie, and Bob were seated on the ground near the wagon, but when they discovered the trapper riding toward them with Frank mounted behind him, they rose to their feet in surprise, and Archie inquired, as he grasped his cousin’s hand—
“Did your horse run himself to death?”
Before Frank could answer, Dick sprang from the saddle, exclaiming:
“Bob! Black Bill’s on the prairy.”
“Black Bill on the prairy!” repeated the old man, slowly, regarding his friend as if he was hardly prepared to believe what he had heard.
“Yes, he ar’ on this yere very prairy,” replied Dick; “an’, Bob,” he continued, stretching his brawny arms to their fullest extent in front of him, and clenching his huge fists, “an’, Bob, that ar’ keerless feller actooally camped with him an’ his rascally chums, last night. Yes, sir, staid in their camp an’ slept thar, an’ this mornin’ they said as how he war a spy of your’n, sent to ketch ’em; so they stole his hoss.”
Old Bob was so astonished at this intelligence, that he almost leaped from the ground; while Dick, without allowing the excited listeners an opportunity to ask a question, seated himself beside Mr. Winters and proceeded to give a full account of all that had transpired at Black Bill’s camp; during which, Archie, surprised and indignant at the treatment his cousin had received, learned that he also had been a heavy loser by the operation. All his beloved relics were gone. But they still had miles of Indian country to traverse, and these could be replaced; while Frank, in being robbed of his horse had sustained a loss that could not be made good. Archie was generous; and, declaring that he had ridden on horseback until he was actually tired of it, told his cousin to consider Sleepy Sam as his own property, an offer which the latter emphatically refused to accept.
“Never mind, youngster,” said old Bob, who had listened to all that had passed between the cousins, “never mind. You shan’t lose nothin’ by bein’ robbed by that varlet. Me an’ Dick will put you on hossback ag’in afore you’re two days older. But this yere shows you that you oughtn’t to make friends with every feller you meet on the prairy, no more’n you would in a big city. Now if you war lost in the settlements, and didn’t know whar to go to find your hum, you would think twice afore you would camp with a teetotal stranger, an’ a feller oughter do the same thing on the prairy. I larnt that long ago, an’ through that same feller, Black Bill. Years ago, when Dick’s old man war alive, it warn’t so. If a feller got a leetle out of his reckonin’, an’ walked into a stranger’s camp, he could roll himself up in his blanket an’ sleep as safe an’ sound as he could any whar, an’ neither man warn’t afraid that the other would rub him out afore daylight. But it aint so now. Them fellers in the settlements got to doin’ meanness, an’ run here to git cl’ar of the laws. But they found thar war law here too; an’ when they done any of their badness, an’ we got our hands on ’em, we made short work with ’em. But they kept comin’ in fast, and when three or four of ’em got together, they would take to the mountains, an’ thar warn’t no use tryin’ to ketch ’em. When we seed how things war agoin’, a lot of us ole trappers, that had knowed each other fur years, made up a comp’ny. We had to do it to defend ourselves ag’in them varlets, fur it soon got so it warn’t healthy fur a lone man on the prairy, if he had any plunder wuth baggin’. We stuck together till that Saskatchewan scrape, an’ now me an’ Dick ar’ the only ones left. I don’t say that we’re the only honest trappers agoin’, ’cause that aint so. Thar ar’ plenty of good ones left; but we ar’ the last of our comp’ny, an’, somehow, we don’t keer ’bout trappin’ with strangers.
“Wal, one spring we went to the fort to trade off the spelter we had ketched durin’ the winter, an’ the trader we sold ’em to, war makin’ up a comp’ny to go to the head waters of the Missouri. He war goin’ with his expedition, an’ he wanted us to go too. He offered us good pay; he would find us we’pons, hosses, traps, and provender fur nothin’, an’ buy our furs to boot. He done this ’cause thar war a good many traders workin’ ag’in him, an’ he wanted to be sartin of gittin’ all the furs we trapped. We had a leetle talk among ourselves about it, an’, finally, told him that it war a bargain, an’ that we would go. So he writ down our names, an’ we tuk up our quarters in the fort till the day come to start. The trader’s name war Forbes, an’ as he war our boss, we used to call him Cap’n Forbes. He warn’t jest the kind of a man a feller would take to be a trader—he smelt too much of the settlements—an’ even at the fort, among rough trappers an’ soldiers, he would spruce up an’ strut like a turkey. ’Sides, he had a nigger to wait on him an’ take keer of his hoss. As I war sayin’, we noticed all these things, but we didn’t keer fur ’em, fur, in course, it warn’t none of our consarn; all we wanted war fur him to pay us fur the spelter we ketched, an’ we knowed he could do that, fur the fellers all said he had a big pile of gold an’ silver that he carried in his saddle-bags.
“Wal, we packed our blankets an’ we’pons down to the quarters the cap’n pointed out, an’ when we got thar, we found he had half a dozen chaps down ’sides ourselves. We knowed one or two of ’em, (an’ we didn’t know nothin’ good of ’em neither,) but the others war strangers to us. Among the strangers war Black Bill—Bosh Peters he said his name war. He war a’most as black as the cap’n’s darkey, an’ thar war a bad look in his eye that none of us didn’t like. An’ him an’ his crowd warn’t at all pleased to see us neither; fur, although they met us kind enough, asked us to help ourselves to their grub, an’ inquired ’bout our luck in trappin’, durin’ the last season, thar war somethin’ ’bout them that told us plainer nor words that they would have been much better satisfied if we had stayed away.