14 LIFEINTHEFARWEST. 



while round one, which was in the center of it, four or five stal- 

 wart hunters, clad in buckskin, sat cross-legged, pipe in mouth. 

 J They were a trapping party from the north fork of Platte, on 

 their way to wintering-ground in the more southern valley of the 

 Arkansas ; some, indeed, meditating a more extended trip, even to 

 the distant settlements of New Mexico, the paradise of mount- 

 aineers. The elder of the company was a tall, gaunt man, with 

 a face browned by twenty years' exposure to the extreme climate 

 of the mountams ; his long black hair, as yet scarcely tinged with 

 gray, hanging almost to his shoulders, but his cheeks and chin 

 clean shaven, after the fashion of the mountain men. His dress 

 was the usual hunting-frock of buckskin, with long fringes down 

 the seams, with pantaloons similarly ornamented, and moccasins 

 of Indian make. While his companions puffed their pipes in 

 silence, he narrated a few of his former experiences of western life ; 

 and while the buffalo "hump-ribs" and "tender-loin" are singing 

 away in the pot, preparing for the hunters' supper, we will note 

 down the yarn as it spins from his lips, giving it in the language 

 spoken in the " far west :" — 



" 'Twas about ' calf-time,' maybe a little later, and not a hun- 

 dred year ago, by a long chalk, that the biggest kind of rendezvous 

 was held ' to* Independence, a mighty handsome little location 

 away up on old Missoura. A pretty smart lot of boys was camp'd 

 thar, about a quarter from the town, and the way the whisky 

 flowed that time was 'some' now, Jean tell you, . Thar was old 

 Sam Owins — him as got * rubbed out' ^ by the Spaniards at Sac- 

 ramenty, or Chihuahuy, this hos doesn't know which, but he ' went 

 under' f any how. Well, Sam had his train along, ready to hitch 

 up for the Mexican country — twenty thunderin big Pittsburg 

 wagons ; and the way his Santa Fe boys took in the liquor beat 

 all— eh. Bill?" 



t D^ed \ ^^^^ terms adapted from the Indian figurative language. 



