LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 99 



The trappers were all sitting at their suppers over the fires, the 

 Indians looking gravely on, when it was remarked that now would 

 be a good opportunity to retaliate upon them for the trouble their 

 incessant attacks had entailed upon the camp. The suggestion 

 was highly approved of, and instantly acted upon. Springing to 

 their feet, the trappers seized their rifles, and commenced the 

 slaughter. The Indians, panic-struck, fled without resistance, and 

 numbers fell before the death-dealing rifles of the mountaineers. 

 A chief, who had been sitting on a rock near the fire where the 

 leader of the trappers sat, had been singled out by the latter as 

 the first mark for his rifle. 



Placing the muzzle to his heart, he pulled the trigger, but the 

 Indian, with extraordinary tenacity of life, rose and grappled with 

 his assailant. The white was a tall, powerful man, but, notwith- 

 standing the deadly wound the Indian had received, he had his 

 equal in strength to contend against. The naked form of the 

 Indian twisted and writhed in his grasp, as he sought to avoid the 

 trapper's uplifted knife. Many of the latter's companions advanced 

 to administer the coiqxie-grdce to the savage, but the trapper 

 cried to them to keep off'; '* If he couldn't whip the Injun," he 

 said, "he'd go under." 



At length he succeeded in throwing him, and, plunging his knif^ 

 no less than seven times into his body, he tore off' his scalp, and 

 w^ent in pursuit of the flying savages. In the course of an hour or 

 two, all the party returned, and sitting by the fires, resumed their 

 suppers, which had been interrupted in the manner just described. 

 Walker, the captain of the band, sat down by the fire where he 

 had been engaged in the struggle with the Indian chief, whose 

 body was lying within a few paces of it. He was in the act of 

 fighting the battle over again to one of his companions, and was 

 saying that the Indian had as much life in him as a buffalo bull, 

 when, to the horror of all present, the savage, who had received 

 wounds sufi5cient for twenty deaths, suddenly rose to a sitting 



