LIFE IN THE FAR WEST 3 



buffalo "hump-ribs" and "tender loin" are singing 

 away in the pot, preparing for the hunters' supper, 

 we will note down the yarn as it spins from his 

 lips, giving it in the language spoken in the "far 

 west :" 



" 'Twas about ' calf-time,' maybe a little later, and 

 not a hunderd year ago by a long chalk, that the 

 biggest kind of rendezvous was held Ho' to Indepen- 

 dence, a mighty handsome little location away up on 

 old Missoura. A pretty smart lot of boys was camp'd 

 thar, about a quarter from the town, and the way the 

 whisky flowed that time was ' some' now, / can tell 

 you. Thar was old Sam Owins him as got ' rubbed 

 out' * by the Spaniards at Sacramenty, or Chihuahuy, 

 this hos doesn't know which, but he ' went under' t 

 any how. Well, Sam had his train along, ready to 

 hitch up for the Mexican country twenty thunderin 

 big Pittsburg waggons ; and the way his Santa Fe boys 

 took in the liquor beat all eh, Bill ?" 



" Well, it did." 



" Bill Bent his boys camped the other side the trail, 

 and they was all mountain-men, wagh ! and Bill 

 Williams, and Bill Tharpe (the Pawnees took his hair 

 on Pawnee Fork last spring) : three Bills, and them 

 three's nil ' gone under.' Surely Hatcher went out that 

 time ; and wasn't Bill Garey along, too ? Didn't him 

 and Chabonard sit in camp for twenty hours at a deck 

 of Euker? Them was Bent's Indian traders up on 



* Killed, ) both terms adapted from the Indian figurative 

 t Died, \ language. 



