LIFE IN THE FAR WEST 141 



of womankind to feel assured that time and absence 

 had long since done the work, if even the natural 

 fickleness of woman's nature had lain dormant. Thus 

 it was that he came to forget Mary Brand, but still 

 remembered the all-absorbing feeling she had once 

 created in his breast, the shadow of which still remained, 

 and often took form and feature in the smoke-wreaths 

 of his solitary camp-fire. 



If truth be told, La Bonte had his failings as a 

 mountaineer, and sin unpardonable in hunter law 

 still possessed, in holes and corners of his breast seldom 

 explored by his inward eye, much of the leaven of 

 kindly human nature, which now and again involun- 

 tarily peeped out, as greatly to the contempt of his 

 comrade trappers as it was blushingly repressed by the 

 mountaineer himself. Thus, in his various matrimo- 

 nial episodes, he treated his dusky sposas with all the 

 consideration the sex could possibly demand from 

 hand of man. No squaw of his ever humped shoulder 

 to receive a castigatory and marital " lodge-poling" for 

 offence domestic ; but often has his helpmate blushed 

 to see her pale-face lord and master devote himself to 

 the feminine labour of packing huge piles of firewood 

 on his back, felling trees, butchering unwieldy buffalo 

 all which are included in the Indian category of 

 female duties. Thus he was esteemed an excellent 

 parti by all the marriageable young squaws of Black- 

 foot, Crow, and Shoshone, of Yutah, Shian, and 

 Arapaho ; but after his last connubial catastrophe, he 

 steeled his heart against all the charms and coquetry of 



