LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 5 



parflesh*) for six weeks ; and poor doins that feedin' is, 

 marm, as you'll never know. One day we crossed a 

 ' canon ' and over a ' divide,' and got into a peraira, whar 

 was green grass, and green trees, and green leaves on the 

 trees, and birds singing in the green leaves, and this in 

 Febrary, wagh ! Our animals was like to die when they 

 see the green grass, and we all sung out, ' Hurraw for 

 summer doins.' 



" 'Hyar goes for meat,' says I, and I jest ups old Ginger 

 at one of them singing-birds, and down come the crittur 

 elegant ; its darned head spinning away from the body, but 

 never stops singing ; and when I takes up the meat, I finds 

 it stone, wagh ! ' Hyar's damp powder and no fire to dry 

 it,' I says, quite skeared. 



" ' Fire be dogged,' says old Rube. ' Hyar's a hos as'll 

 make fire come ;' and with that he takes his axe and lets 

 drive at a cotton wood. Schr-u-k goes the axe agin the 

 tree, and out comes a bit of the blade as big as my hand. 

 We looks at the animals, and thar they stood shaking 

 over the grass, which I'm dog-gone if it wasn't stone, too. 

 Young Sublette comes up, and he'd been clerking down to 

 the fort on Platte, so he know'd something. He looks and 

 looks, and scrapes the trees with his butcher knife, and 

 snaps the grass like pipe-stems, and breaks the leaves 

 a-snappin' like Californy shells.' 



" < What's all this, boy ? ' I asks. 



" ' Putrefactions,' says he, looking smart ; ' putrefactions, 

 or I'm a niggur.' 



" 'La, Mister Harris,' says the lady, ' putrefactions! why, 

 did the leaves and the trees and the grass smell badly ?' 



" ' Smell badly, marm ! ' says Black Harris ; ' would a 

 skunk stink if he was froze to stone ? No, marm, this 

 child didn't know what putrefaction was, and young Sub- 

 lette's varsion wouldn't * shine ' nohow, so I chips a piece 

 out of a tree and puts it in my trap-sack, and carries it in 

 safe to Laramie. Well, old Captain Stewart (a clever man 

 was that, though he was an Englishman), he comes along 



* Soles made of buffalo hide. 



