IN THE OLD WEST 35 



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 trap- 

 per, and flung about his dollars right smart. 

 Thar was old grit in him, too, and a hair of the 

 black b'ar at that.* 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 Yal- 

 ler 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, when I went to that camp to see the 

 boys afore they put out; and you know. Bill, as 

 I sat to euchre and seven up till every cent was 

 gone. 



" ' Take back twenty, old coon,' says Big John. 



** * H — 's full of such takes back,' says I ; and 

 I puts back to town and fetches the rifle and the 

 * A spice of the devil. 



