CHAPTER V. 



WE have said that La Bonte was a philosopher : he 

 took the streaks of ill luck which checkered his moun- 

 tain life with perfect carelessness, if not with stoical 

 indifference. Nothing ruffled his danger-steeled equa- 

 nimity of temper ; no sudden emotion disturbed his 

 mind. We have seen how wives were torn from him 

 without eliciting a groan or grumble, (but such con- 

 tretemps, it may be said, can scarcely find a place in the 

 category of ills) ; how the loss of mules and mustangs, 

 harried by horse-stealing Indians, left him in the ne- 

 plus-ultra of mountain misery afoot ; how packs and 

 peltries, the hard-earned beaver of his perilous hunts, 

 were " raised " at one fell swoop by freebooting bands 

 of savages. Hunger and thirst, we know, were common- 

 place sensations to the mountaineer. His storm- 

 hardened flesh scarce felt the pinging wounds of 

 arrow-point or bullet ; and when in the midst of Indian 

 fight, it is not probable that any tender qualms of 

 feeling would allay the itching of his fingers for his 

 enemy's scalp-lock, nor would any remains of civilised 

 fastidiousness prevent his burying his knife again and 

 again in the life-blood of an Indian savage. 

 Still, in one dark corner of his heart, there shone at 



