THE GUIDE TO THE PLAINS. 155 



in all the otherwise useless stuff he could thus get rid of. 

 Precisely like his fellow-tradesmen in America, this wag 

 gon-maker set about his task with perfect indifference as 

 to when or how he should finish the article required, and 

 I found that he paid very little attention to my repeated 

 exhortations as to haste. However, by dint of repeated 

 visits he put the body of the waggon together, and of 

 that fact I made a spur, for I assured him that if he did 

 not finish the waggon by a certain day, I would go 

 away without it, and he would have worked, so far as 

 he had gone, for nothing. The next thing I did was to 

 ask Mr John Campbell, who resided there, to whom Mr 

 Eobert Campbell had given me a letter, and Mr Hartley, 

 a general merchant, as also Mr Powell, to recommend 

 me a guide for the plains a man, in short, to whom I 

 could safely intrust the contents of niy camp, and who 

 was so respectable that he might be permitted to hire me 

 six good men, who were to act under his directions. I 

 told these gentlemen that if they could find such a guide 

 and trustworthy man, they might also fix the wages I 

 was to give him, for, of course/ if such a man could be 

 found, he would be worthy of his hire. They fixed on 

 an individual named John Canterall, one of whose hands 

 was deformed, and how he turned out, or what that 

 rascal's real value was, remains to be told, the inordinate 

 wages for him having been fixed at one hundred dollars 

 a month. 



The first thing this fellow did was to assure me that I 

 had not sufficient stores even for himself and six men, 

 and that in his great conscientious duty he thought it 

 right to inform me that, with the Indians in a disturbed 

 state, and the number of half-starved and lawless emi* 

 grants returning disappointed from Pike's Peak and the 



