LIFE IN THE FAR WEST 13 



" We could do nothin', for, before our guns were 

 loaded, all three were dead and their scalps gone. Five 

 of our boys got rubbed out that time, and seven Injuns 

 lay wolfs meat, while a many more went away gut-shot, 

 I'll lay. Hows'ever, five of us went under, and the 

 Pawnees made a raise of a dozen mules, wagh ! " 



Thus far, in his own words, we have accompanied the 

 old hunter in his tale ; and probably he would have 

 taken us, by the time that the Squaw Chilipat had pro- 

 nounced the beaver tails cooked, safely across the 

 grand prairies fording Cotton Wood, Turkey Creek, 

 Little Arkansa, Walnut Creek, and Pawnee Fork 

 passed the fireless route of the Coon Creeks, through a 

 sea of fat buffalo meat, without fuel to cook it ; have 

 struck the big river, and, leaving at the " Crossing" the 

 waggons destined for Santa Fe, have trailed us up the 

 Arkansa to Bent's Fort; thence up Boiling Spring, 

 across the divide over to the southern fork of the Platte, 

 away up to the Black Hills, and finally camped us, with 

 hair still preserved, in the beaver-abounding valleys of 

 the Sweet Water, and Cache la Poudre, under the 

 rugged shadow of the Wind River mountains ; if it -had 

 not so happened, at this juncture, as all our mountain- 

 eers sat cross-legged round the fire, pipe in mouth, and 

 with Indian gravity listened to the yarn of the old 

 trapper, interrupting him only with an occasional wagh ! 

 or with the exclamations of some participator in the 

 events then under narration, who would every now and 

 then put in a corroborative, " This child remembers 

 that fix," or, " hyar's a niggur lifted hair that spree," 



