2 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



four fires burned in the encampment, at some of which 

 Indian women carefully tended, sundry steaming pots ; 

 whilst round one, which was in the centre of it, four 01 

 five stalwart hunters, clad in buckskin, sat cross-legged, 

 pipe in mouth. 



They were a trapping party from the north fork of 

 Platte, on their way to wintering-ground in the more 

 southern valley of the Arkansa ; some, indeed, meditating 

 a more extended trip, even to the distant settlements of 

 New Mexico, the paradise of mountaineers. The elder of 

 the company was a tall gaunt man, with a face browned 

 by twenty years' exposure to the extreme climate of the 

 mountains ; his long black hair, as yet scarcely tinged with 

 grey, hanging almost to his shoulders, but his cheeks and 

 chin clean shaven, after the fashion of the mountain-men. 

 His dress was the usual hunting-frock of buckskin, with 

 long fringes down the seams, with pantaloons similarly 

 ornamented, and mocassins of Indian make. Whilst his 

 companions puffed their pipes in silence, he narrated a 

 few of his former experiences of western life ; and whilst 

 the buffalo " hump-ribs " and " tender loin " are singing 

 away in the pot, preparing for the hunters' supper, we will 

 note down the yarn as it spins from his lips, giving it in 

 the language spoken in the "far west:" 



" 'Twas about ' calf- time,' maybe a little later, and not a 

 hundred year ago by a long chalk, that the biggest kind of 

 rendezvous was held ' to ' to Independence, a mighty hand- 

 some little location away up on old Missoura. A pretty 

 smart lot of boys was camped thar, about a quarter from 

 the town, and the way the whisky flowed that time was 

 ' some ' now, / can tell you. Thar was old Sam Owins 

 him as got ' rubbed out '* by the Spaniards at Sacramenty, 

 or Chihuahuy, this hos doesn't know which, but he * went 

 under 'f anyhow. Well, Sam had his train along, ready 

 to hitch up for the Mexican country twenty thunderin' 

 big Pittsburg waggons; and the way his Santa Fe" boys 

 took in the liquor beat all eh, Bill ? " 



* Killed, ) both terms adapted from the Indian figurative lan- 

 t Died, ) guage. 



