And none more frequently than Saint Vrain, by whose daring and enterprise not only were caravans carried across the almost untrodden wilderness to the Mexican settlements of Santa Fé, but forts established in the very midst of this wilderness, and garrisons maintained, with a military efficiency rivalling the body-guard of many a little European despot!
Yet there was no despotism here, supported by the sweat of a taxed people; only a simple defensive organisation for the pursuit of a valuable, as a laudable, industry.
And when the iron horse goes snorting through the midst of those distant solitudes, and cities have sprung up on his track, the spots so marked in our history will become classic ground; and many a tale will be told of them, redolent of the richest romance.
Were I to live in the not very remote future, I would rather have in my ornamental grounds the ruins of one of Bent’s or Saint Vrain’s Forts, than the crumbling walls of Kenilworth Castle or the Keep of Carisbrooke. More picturesquely romantic, more exalting, would be the souvenirs recalled, and the memories awakened by them.
Saint Vrain’s trading-post, on the South Fork of the Platte, was one of those long noted as a favourite rendezvous of the free trappers (Note 1), as might have been told by any one chancing to make stop at it in the season when these wandering adventurers laid aside their traps to indulge in a spell of idleness and a “spree.”
Just such a time was that when Squire Blackadder and his emigrant companions were approaching the post, and fell into the clutches of the Cheyennes. It was not one of their grandest gatherings, since only about twenty of them were there; but among twenty trappers, or even less, there is no lack of company. And if all, or even part of them, have returned with fat packs, and found beaver selling at three dollars the “plew” (Note 2), there will be a merry company; at times becoming dangerous—not only to strangers, but to one another—through too much drink.
An assemblage of this sort—including, we are sorry to say, both the sober and the drunk—were at Saint Vrain’s Fort, on the day above specified. They had come there from all quarters—from the parks and “holes” of the Rocky Mountains, from the streams, creeks, and branches on this side running east, as well as from the head waters of the Green, Bear, and Colorado coursing west. Nearly all of them had made a good season of it, and arrived with their pack animals staggering under the spoils of the trap and the rifle.
These had become the property of the Fort, after an exchange on its side of guns, knives, powder, and lead, with five-point Mackinaw blankets, and other articles of trapper wear; including those of adornment, and not forgetting some sparkling bijouterie intended as gifts, or “guages d’amour” for the bronze-skinned beauties of the prairie. Rude as is the trapper’s life, and solitary too, he is not insensible either to the soft charms of love, or its companionship.
In addition to the articles thus swapped or “trucked,” the trappers assembled at Saint Vrain’s in exchange for their peltries, had received a large quantity of coin currency, in the shape of Mexican silver dollars. With these burning the bottoms out of their pockets, it is scarce necessary to say that drink was the order of the day, with cards as its accompaniment.
We regret having to make this statement; as also that quarrels are the too frequent termination of these games of euchre and “poker.”