6 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



next spring, and a Dutch doctor chap was along too. I 

 shows him the piece I chipped out of the tree, and he called 

 it a putrefaction too ; and so, marm, if that wasn't a putre- 

 fied peraira, what was it ? For this hos doesn't know, and 

 he knows ' fat cow ' from ' poor bull,' anyhow.' 



" Well, old Black Harris is gone under too, I believe. 

 He went to the ' Parks ' trapping with a Vide Poche 

 Frenchman, who shot him for his bacca and traps. Darn 

 them Frenchmen, they're no account any way you lays 

 your sight. (Any bacca in your bag, Bill? this beaver 

 feels like chawing.) 



" Well, anyhow, thar was the camp, and they was goin' 

 to put out the next morning ; and the last as come out of 

 Independence was that ar Englishman. He'd a nor-west* 

 capote on, and a two-shoot gun rifled. Well, them English 

 are darned fools ; they can't fix a rifle any ways ; but that 

 one did shoot 'some ;' leastwise he made it throw plum- 

 center. He made the bufler * come,' he did, and font well 

 at Pawnee Fork too. What was his name ? All the boys 

 called him Cap' en, and he got his fixings from old Choteau; 

 but what he wanted out thar in the mountains, I never 

 jest rightly know'd. He was no trader, nor a trapper, and 

 flung about his dollars right smart. Thar was old grit in 

 him, too, and a hair of the black b'ar at that.f They say 

 he took the bark off the Shians when he cleared out of the 

 village with old Beavertail's squaw. He'd been on Yaller 

 Stone afore that : Leclerc know'd him in the Blackfoot, 

 and up in the Chippeway country ; and he had the best 

 powder as ever I flashed through life, and his gun was 

 handsome, that's a fact. Them thar locks was grand ; and 

 old Jake Hawken's nephey (him as trapped on Heeley that 

 time) told me, the other day, as he saw an English gun on 

 Arkansa last winter as beat all off hand. 



" Nigh upon two hundred dollars I had in my possibles, 



* The Hudson Bay Company, having amalgamated with the 

 American North- West Company, is known by the name ' North- 

 West' to the southern trappers. Their employe's usually wear 

 Canadian capotes. 



J* A spice of the devil. 



