LIFE IN THE FAR WEST 7 



" ' Fire be dogged,' says old Rube. ' Hyar's a hos 

 as '11 make fire come ; ' and with that he takes his axe 

 and lets drive at a cotton wood. Schr-u-k goes the 

 axe agin the tree, and out comes a bit of the blade as 

 big as my hand. We looks at the animals, and thar 

 they stood shaking over the grass, which I'm dog-gone 

 if it wasn't stone, too. Young Sublette comes up, and 

 he'd been clerking down to the fort on Platte, so he 

 know'd something. He looks and looks, and scrapes the 

 trees with his butcher knife, and snaps the grass like 

 pipe stems, and breaks the leaves a-snappin' like Cali- 

 forny shells.' 



" ' What's all this, boy T I asks. 



" ' Putrefactions,' says he, looking smart ; ' putrefac- 

 tions, or I'm a niggur.' 



"'La, Mister Harris,' says the lady, ' putrefactions ! why, 

 did the leaves and the trees and the grass smell badly 1 ' 



" ' Smell badly, mama ! ' says Black Harris ; ' would 

 a skunk stink if he was froze to stone 1 No, marm, this 

 child didn't know what putrefaction was, and young 

 Sublette's varsion wouldn't ' shine ' nohow, so I chips a 

 piece out of a tree and puts it in my trap-sack, and 

 carries it in safe to Laramie. Well, old Captain Stewart, 

 (a clever man was that, though he was an Englishman,) 

 he comes along next spring, and a Dutch doctor chap 

 was along too. I shows him the piece I chipped out of 

 the tree, and he called it a putrefaction too ; and so, 

 marm, if that wasn't a putrefied peraira, what was it ? 

 For this hos doesn't know, and he knows ' fat cow' from 

 * poor bull,' anyhow.' 



