OUT WHERE THE WEST BEGINS 



best six-line driver that ever drove over the Blue 

 Mountains. Along behind, trudges gray-grizzled, 

 bearded Frank Beagle, another old-timer and pros- 

 pector, his burro loaded with the same outfit he panned 

 and dug with across a span of years. 



I rode beside an old scout, H. C. (Hank) Cap- 

 linger, and somehow — just by fate perhaps — old 

 "Hank" was left out of history along with Peg Leg 

 Smith. We halted for a spell for the line to lengthen 

 out. "Yes, it's a Dutch name," old Hank told me, 

 "but I guess I'm Irish." 



"When did you come out?" 



"Crossed the plains with an ox team in '45. Scouted 

 for the government and fit in Indian scraps; two in 

 Montana, others in Southern Oregon, Northern Cali- 

 fornia, and in the Pitt River country. That's where I 

 was wounded. Of all the damned renegades that 

 crowd was the worst. I was with one hundred and 

 thirty Warm Spring Oregon Indians and Donald 

 McKay, a half-breed ranger and scout, and by God, 

 the best trailer that ever started out. Run 'em for over 

 two and a half months through the mountains. Run 

 'em down and got every mother's son of 'em. And 

 scalped every one of 'em, too. Been buckarooing in 

 every country where a white man dared to go and 

 never been arrested for stealing yet. Most of the time 

 I was with Buffalo Bill, Kit Carson and Peg Leg 

 Smith, and Peg Leg Smith was the gamest man in the 

 whole damn outfit, but he was never writ up." 



Then the contingent moved on through the crowds. 

 Yes, there is many a hero of the West, unheralded, be- 

 cause "he never was writ up." 



39 



