48 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



Company), has come down the Mississippi, from the 

 " Falls," to try the sweets and liberty of " free " trapping 

 hobnobs with a stalwart leather-clad " boy," just returned 

 from trapping on the waters of Grand River, on the west- 

 ern side the mountains, who interlards his mountain jar- 

 gon with Spanish words picked up in Taos and California. 

 In one corner a trapper, lean and gaunt from the starving 

 regions of the Yellow Stone, has just recognised an old 

 campanyero, with whom he hunted years before in the 

 perilous country of the Blackfeet. 



" Why, John, old hos, how do you come on ? " 

 " What ! Meek, old 'coon ! I thought you were under ? " 

 One from Arkansa stalks into the centre of the room, 

 with a pack of cards in his hand and a handful of dollars 

 in his hat. Squatting cross-legged on a buffalo-robe, he 

 smacks down the money and cries out " Ho, boys ! hyar's 

 a deck, and hyar's the beaver " (rattling the coin) ; " who 

 dar set his hos ? Wagh ! " 



Tough are the yarns of Wondrous hunts and Indian 

 perils, of hairbreadth 'scapes and curious " fixes." Tran- 

 scendent are the qualities of sundry rifles which call these 

 hunters masters; "plum" is the "centre" each vaunted 

 barrel shoots ; sufficing for a hundred wigs is the " hair " 

 each hunter has " lifted " from Indians' scalps ; multitu- 

 dinous the " coups " he has " struck." As they drink so 

 do they brag, first of their guns, their horses, and their 

 squaws, and lastly of themselves : and when it comes to 

 that, " ware steel." 



La Bonte, on his arrival at St Louis, found himself one 

 day in no less a place than this ; and here he made ac- 

 quaintance with an old trapper about to start for the 

 mountains in a few days, to hunt on the head-waters of 

 Platte and Green River. With this man he resolved to 

 start, and, having still some hundred dollars in cash, he 

 immediately set about equipping himself for the expedi- 

 tion. To effect this, he first of all visited the gun-store of 

 Hawken, whose rifles are renowned in the mountains, and 

 exchanged his own piece, which was of very small bore, 

 for a regular mountain rifle. This was of very heavy 



