8 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST 



" Well, old Black Harris is gone under too, I believe. 

 He went to the ' Parks ' trapping with a Yide P6che 

 Frenchman, who shot him for his bacca and traps. 

 Darn them Frenchmen, they're no account any way 

 you lays your sight. (Any bacca in your bag, Bill ? 

 this beaver feels like chawing.) 



" Well, any how, thar was the camp, and they was 

 goin to put out the next morning and the last as come 

 out of Independence was that ar Englishman. He'd a 

 nor- west* capote on, and a two-shoot gun rifled. Well, 

 them English are darned fools ; they can't fix a rifle 

 any ways ; but that one did shoot l some ; ' leastwise 

 he made it throw plumcenter. He made the bufler 

 ( come,' he did, and fout well at Pawnee Fork too. 

 What was his name 1 All the boys called him Cap'en, 

 and he got his fixings from old Choteau ; but what he 

 wanted out thar in the mountains, I never jest rightly 

 know'd. He was no trader, nor a trapper, and flung 

 about his dollars right smart. Thar was old grit in him, 

 too, and a hair of the black b'ar at that.t They say 

 he took the bark off the Shians when he cleared out of 

 the village with old Beavertail's squaw. He'd been 

 on Yaller Stone afore that : Leclerc know'd him in the 

 Blackfoot, and up in the Chippeway country ; and he 

 had the best powder as ever I flashed through life, and 



* The Hudson Bay Company having amalgamated with the 

 American North West Company, is known by the name ' North 

 West ' to the southern trappers. Their employes usually wear 

 Canadian capotes. 



f A spice of the devil. 



