40 IN THE OLD WEST 



and seven Injuns lay wolf's meat, while a many 

 more went away gut-shot, I'll lay. Hows'ever, 

 five of us went under, and the Paw^nees made a raise 

 of a dozen mules, wagh ! " 



Thus far, in his own words, we have accom- 

 panied the old hunter in his tale ; and probably 

 he would have taken us, by the time that the 

 Squaw Chilipat had pronounced the beaver-tails 

 cooked, safely across the grand prairies — ford- 

 ing Cotton Wood, Turkey Creek, Little Arkansa, 

 Walnut Creek, and Pawnee Fork — passed the fire- 

 less route of the Coon Creeks, through a sea of 

 fat buffalo-meat, without fuel to cook it; have 

 struck the big river, and, leaving at the Crossing 

 the wagons destined for Santa Fe, have trailed us 

 up the Arkansa to Bent's Fort ; thence up Boiling 

 Spring, across the divide over to the southern 

 fork of the Platte, away up to the Black Hills, 

 and finally camped us, with hair still preserved, 

 in the beaver-abounding valleys of the Sweet 

 Water, and Cache la Poudre, under the rugged 

 shadow of the Wind River Mountains ; if it had 

 not so happened, at this juncture, as all our moun- 

 taineers sat cross-legged round the fire, pipe in 

 mouth, and with Indian gravity listened to the 

 yarn of the old trapper, interrupting him only 

 with an occasional wagh ! or with the exclamations 

 of some participator in the events then under 

 narration, who would every now and then put in 

 a corroborative, — " This child remembers that 



