LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 17 



this child wouldn't say so. The snow was about fifty foot deep, 

 and the bufler lay dead on the ground like bees after a beein' ; 

 not whar we was tho', for tliar was no bufler, and no meat, and 

 me and my band had been livin' on our moccasins (leastwise the 

 parflesh*), for six weeks ; and poor doins that feedin' is, marm, as 

 you'll never know. One day we crossed a * carion' and over a 

 ' divide,' and got into peraira, whar was green grass, and green 

 trees, and green leaves on the trees, and birds singing in the green 

 leaves, and this in Febrary, wagh ! Our animals was like to die 

 when they see the green grass, and we all sung out, ' hurraw for 

 summer doins.' 



" ' Hyar goes for meat,' says I, and I jest ups old Ginger at one 

 of them singing birds, and down come the crittur elegant ; its 

 darned head spinning away from the body, but never stops singing, 

 and when I takes up the meat, I finds it stone, wagh I ' Hyar's 

 damp powder and no fire to dry it,' I says, quite skeared. 



" ' Fire be dogged,' says old Rube. ' Hyar's a hos as '11 make 

 fire come ; and with that he takes his ax and lets it drive at a 

 cotton wood. Schr-u-k — goes the ax agin the tree, and out comes 

 a bit of the blade as big as my hand. We looks at the animals, 

 and tliar they stood shaking over the grass, which I'm dog-gone 

 if it wasn't stone, too. Young Sublette comes up, and he'd been 

 clerking dovra to the fort on Platte, so he know'd something. He 

 looks and looks, and scrapes the trees with his butcher knife, and 

 snaps the grass like pipe stems, and breaks the leaves a-snappin' 

 like Cahfomy shells. 



" ' What's all this, boy ?' I asks. 



" 'Putrefactions,' says he, looking smart, 'putrefactions, or I'm 

 a niggur.' 



" 'La, Mister Harris,' says the lady, 'putrefactions ! why, did 

 the leaves, and the trees, and the grass smell badly V 



* Soles made of buffalo hide. 



