18 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



" * Smell badly, mami I' says Black Harris, ' would a skunk 

 stink if he was froze to stone ? No, marm, this child didn't know 

 what putrefaction was, and young Sublette's varsion wouldn't 



* shine' no how, so I chips a piece out of a tree and puts it in my 

 trap-sack, and carries it in safe to Laramie. Well, old Captain 

 Stewart, (a clever man was that, though he was an Englishman), 

 he comes along next spring, and a Dutch doctor chap was along 

 too. I shows him the piece I chipped out of the tree, and he 

 called it a putrefaction too ; and so, marm, if that wasn't a putre- 

 fied peraira, what was it ? For this hos doesn't know, and he 

 knows ' fat cow' from ' poor bull,' anyhow.' ^ 



" Well, old Black Harris is gone under too, I believe. He went 

 to the ' Parks' trapping with a Vide Poche Frenchman, who shot 

 him for his bacca and traps. Darn them Frenchmen, they're no 

 account any way you lays your sight. (Any bacca in your bag, 

 Bill ? this beaver feels like chawing.) 



*' Well, any how, thar was the camp, and they was going to 

 put out the next morning ; and the last as come out of Indepen- 

 dence was that ar Englishman. He'd a nor-west ^ capote on, and 

 a two-shoot gun rifled. Well, them English are darned fools ; 

 they can't fix a rifle any ways ; but that one did shoot ' some ;' 

 leastwise Jie 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 tiapper, 

 and flung about his dollars right smart. Thar was old grit in 

 him, too, and a hair of the black b'ar at that.t They say he 

 took the bark ofiHhe Shians when he cleared out of the village with 



* The Hudson Bay Company having amalgamated with the American North 

 West Company, is known by the name 'North West' to the southern trappers. 

 Their employes usually wear Canadian capotes. 



t A spice of the devil 



