CHAPTER V 



WE have said that La Bonte was a philos- 

 opher: he took the streaks of ill luck 

 which checkered his mountain life with 

 perfect carelessness, if not with stoical indiffer- 

 ence. Nothing ruffled his danger-steeled equanim- 

 ity of temper; no sudden emotion disturbed his 

 mind. We have seen how wives were torn from 

 him without eliciting a groan or grumble, (but 

 such contretemps^ it may be said, can scarcely 

 find a place in the category of ills) ; how the loss 

 of mules and mustangs, harried by horse-stealing 

 Indians, left him in the ne plus ultra of mountain 

 misery — afoot ; how packs and peltries, the hard- 

 earned beaver of his perilous hunts, were 

 '' raised " at one fell swoop by freebooting bands 

 of savages. Hunger and thirst, we know, were 

 commonplace sensations to the mountaineer. 

 His storm-hardened flesh scarce felt the pinging 

 wounds of arrow-point or bullet ; and when in the 

 midst of Indian fight, it is not probable that any 

 tender qualms of feeling would allay the itching 

 of his fingers for his enemy's scalp-lock, nor would 

 any remains of civilized fastidiousness prevent 

 his burying his knife again and again in the life- 

 blood of an Indian savage. 

 179 



