[65] Long poles, one fastened on each side of a pony, the ends dragging on the ground far to the rear; on these the dead and wounded were carried. The Indians also move their camp equipage by this primitive means of transportation.
[66] Strange as it may seem, this savage, instead of being moved with hatred toward Colonel Cody, as a civilized woman would have been under similar circumstances, actually looked upon him with special favour and esteemed it quite an honour that her husband, a great warrior himself, should have met his death at the hands of such a brave man as the Prairie Chief, the name the Indians had given to the colonel.
[67] Nelson is still shooting Indians from the top of the old Deadwood stage-coach in the Wild West show.
[68] The rendezvous, in trapper's parlance, was a point somewhere in the region where the agents of the fur companies congregate to purchase the season's catch, and where the traders brought such goods as trappers needed, to sell.
[69] A very bad quality of whiskey made in Taos in the early days, which, on account of its fiery nature, was called “Taos Lightning.”
[70] The Ute name for the Spanish Peaks.
[71] His name for his knife. It was the custom of the old trappers and hunters to personify their weapons, usually in remembrance of the locality where they got them.
[72] If “California Joe” had any other name, but few knew it; he was a grizzled trapper and scout of the old régime. He was the best all-round shot on the plains. He was the first man to ride with General Custer into the village of Black Kettle, of the Cheyennes, when that chief's band was annihilated in the battle of the Washita, in November, 1868, by the U. S. Cavalry and the Nineteenth Kansas. Joe was murdered in the Black Hills several years ago.
[73] Uncle of Senator Cockrell of Missouri.
[74] The real name of this strange old trapper was Thomas L. Smith. He was eventually killed by the Indians.