IN THE OLD WEST 285 



white hunters who swagger in all the pride of 

 fringe and leather through their towns, they, as 

 is but natural, gladly accept husbands from the 

 latter class : preferring the stranger, who pos- 

 sesses the heart and strong right arm to defend 

 them, to the miserable cowardly " pelados," who 

 hold what little they have on sufferance of savage 

 Indians, but one degree superior to themselves. 



Certainly no band of hunters that ever appeared 

 in the Vale of Taos numbered in its ranks a prop- 

 erer lot of lads than those now camped on Green- 

 horn, intent on matrimonial foray into the settle- 

 ments of New Mexico. There was young Dick 

 Wooton,* who was " some " for his inches, being 

 six feet six, and as straight and strong as the 

 barrel of his long rifle. Shoulder to shoulder with 

 this " boy " stood Rube Herring, and not a hair's- 

 breadth difference in height or size was there be- 

 tween them. Killbuck, though mountain winters 

 had sprinkled a few snow-flakes on his head, looked 

 up to neither ; and La Bonte held his own with any 

 mountaineer who ever set a trap in sight of Long's 

 Peak or the Snowy Range. Marcelline — who, 

 though a Mexican, despised his people and abjured 

 his blood, having been all his life in the mountains 

 with the white hunters — looked down easily upon 

 six feet and odd inches. In form a Hercules, he 

 had the symmetry of an Apollo ; with strikingly 

 handsome features, and masses of long black hair 



* Still living about 1898 in Colorado. (Ed.) 



