AN ATTEMPT TO GIVE ADVICE. 71 



of prey, as a necessity of his life a parasite ; from acquired 

 dexterity, as a solicitor of favours, a sycophant ; a man of 

 this class is a plausible, cunning, and when requisite to 

 gain a point, deferential rascal. He has no self-respect 

 to be wounded by mannerisms. Most of these men have 

 during their roving careers been many times across the 

 Plains. To loaf round camp-fires is their delight. It is to 

 them as the blacksmith's shop is to the idlers of many an 

 English country village. From the mouths of the actors in 

 them they have often heard tales of hunting, of trapping, 

 of Indian warfare. The unwritten romances of the wilder- 

 ness, the half-legendary folk-lore of the border, are oft- 

 told tales to them. They are thoroughly qualified to cajole, 

 humbug, and impose on an open-hearted, ardent English 

 sportsman, who, knowing nothing of what he is about to 

 undertake, thinks he knows it all. 



I had once a little experience with a party of my 

 countrymen who had chosen Leavenworth city, then a 

 straggling frontier town with a very uncertain future, as 

 their point of departure on a sporting trip to the neigh- 

 bouring prairie. I daresay they were first-rate fellows, and 

 that I should have found them to be so had we become 

 properly acquainted. They were gentlemen by birth, rank, 

 and position. I do not know that the affair is worth telling, 

 but, like the story of Little Bed Riding-hood, "it has a 

 moral, and may teach a lesson." 



Having occasion to go to Leavenworth to see to the 

 due fulfilling of an army contract, I took up my quarters 

 at my usual resting-place, "The Planters' Hotel," then 

 owned and "run" by one of my warmest partisans. I was 



