64 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



dowii the Mississippi, from the " Falls," to try the sweets and 

 liberty of " free" trapping — hobnobs with a stalwart leather-clad 

 "boy," just returning from trapping on the waters of Grand River, 

 on the western side the mountains, who interlards his mountain 

 jargon with Spanish words picked up in Taos and California. 

 In one corner a trapper, lean and gaunt from the starving regions 

 of the Yellow Stone, has just recognized an old companyero, with 

 whom he hunted years before in the perilous country of the Black- 

 feet. 



" Why, John, old hos, how do you come on ?" 

 " What I Meek, old 'coon ! I thought you were under I" 

 One from Arkansas stalks into the center of the room, with a 

 pack of cards in his hand, and a handful of dollars in his hat. 

 Squatting cross-legged on a buffalo robe, he smacks down the 

 money, and cries out — " Ho, boys, hyar's a deck, and hyar's the 

 beaver (rattling the coin), who dar set his hos ? Wagh I" 



Tough are the yarns of wondrous hunts and Indian perils, of 

 hairbreadth 'scapes and curious " fixes." Transcendent are the 

 qualities of sundry rifles, which call these hunters masters ; " plum" 

 is the " centre" each vaunted barrel shoots ; sufficing for a hun- 

 dred wigs is the " hair" each hunter has lifted from Indians' 

 scalps; multitudinous the "coups" he has "struck." As they 

 drink so do they brag, first of their guns, their horses, and their 

 squaws, and lastly of themselves : and when it comes to that, 

 " ware steel." 



La Bonte, on his arrival at St. Louis, found himself one day 

 in no less a place than this ; and here he made acquaintance with 

 an old trapper about to start for the mountains in a few days, to 

 hunt on the head waters of Platte and Green Biver. With this 

 man he resolved to start, and, having still some hundred dollars 

 in cash, he immediately set about equipping himself for the ex 

 pedition. To effect this, he first of all visited the gun-store of 

 Ilawken, whose rifles are renowned in the mountains, and ex- 



