28 IN THE OLD WEST 



make meat." Round the camp fed twelve or fif- 

 teen mules and horses, their fore-legs confined by 

 hobbles of rawhide ; and, guarding these animals, 

 two men paced backwards and forwards, driving 

 in the stragglers, ascending ever and anon the 

 bluffs which overhung the river, and leaning on 

 their long rifles, whilst they swept with their eyes 

 the surrounding prairie. Three or four fires 

 burned in the encampment, at some of which 

 Indian women carefully tended sundry steaming 

 pots ; whilst round one, which was in the center 

 of it, four or five stalwart hunters, clad in buck- 

 skin, sat cross-legged, pipe in mouth. 



They were a trapping party from the north 

 fork of Platte, on their way to wintering-ground 

 in the more southern valley of the Arkansa ; some, 

 indeed, meditating a more extended trip, even to 

 the distant settlements of New Mexico, the para- 

 dise of mountaineers. The elder of the company 

 was a tall gaunt man, with a face browned by 

 twenty years* exposure to the extreme climate of 

 the mountains ; his long black hair, as yet scarcely 

 tinged with gray, hanging almost to his shoul- 

 ders, but his cheeks and chin clean shaven, after 

 the fashion of the mountain-men. His dress was 

 the usual hunting-frock of buckskin, with long 

 fringes down the seams, with pantaloons similarly 

 ornamented, and moccasins of Indian make. 

 Whilst his companions puffed their pipes in si- 

 lence, he narrated a few of his former experi- 



