86 IN THE OLD WEST 



gSLging life of a trapper of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains. 



La Bonte * was raised in the state of Mississippi, 

 not far from Memphis, on the left bank of that 

 huge and snag-filled river. His father was a Saint 

 Louis Frenchman, his mother a native of Tennes- 

 see. When a boy, our trapper was " some," he 

 said, with the rifle, and always had a hankering 

 for the West; particularly when, on accompany- 

 ing his father to Saint Louis every spring, he saw 

 the different bands of traders and hunters start 

 upon their annual expeditions to the mountains. 

 Greatly did he envy the independent insouciant 

 trappers, as, in all the glory of beads and buck- 

 skin, they shouldered their rifles at Jake Hawk- 

 en's door (the rifle-maker of Saint Louis), and 

 bade adieu to the cares and trammels of civilized 

 life. 



However, li*ke a thoughtless beaver-kitten, he 

 put his foot into a trap one fine day, set by Mary 

 Brandjf a neighbor's daughter, and esteemed 

 " some punkins " — or, in other words, toasted 

 as the beauty of the county — by the suscep- 

 tible Mississippians. From that moment he was 

 " gone beaver ; " " he felt queer," he said, " all 

 over, like a buffalo shot in the lights ; he had no 



* The name of this trapper is perpetuated in La Bont6 

 Creek, M'hich enters the Platte River 66 miles above the 

 mouth of the Laramie, on the old Orep^on trail. (Ed.) 



tMary Chase. See introduction to this volume. (Ed.) 



