122 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



Year after year wore on, however, and still found liim, with 

 traps and rifle, following his perilous avocation ; and each succeed- 

 ing one saw him more and more wedded to the wild mountain-life. 

 He was conscious how unfitted he had become again to enter the 

 galling harness of conventionality and civilization. He thought, 

 too, how changed in manners and aj)pearance he now must be, 

 and could not believe that he would again find favor in the eyes of 

 his quondam love, who, he judged, had long since forgotten him ; 

 and inexperienced as he was in such matters, yet he knew enough 

 of womankind to feel assured that time and absence had long since 

 done the work, if even the natural fickleness of Avoman's nature 

 had lain dormant. Thus it was that he came to forget Mary 

 Brand, but still remembered the all-absorbing feeling she had once 

 created in his breast, the shadow of which still remained, and often 

 took form and feature in the smoke-wreaths of his solitary camp- 

 fire. 



If truth be told, La Bonte had his failings as a mountaineer, 

 and — sin unpardonable in hunter law — still possessed, in holes and 

 corners of his breast seldom explored by his inward eye, much of 

 the leaven of kindly human nature, which now and again involun- 

 tarily peeped out, as greatly to the contempt of his comrade trap- 

 pers as it was blushingly repressed by the mountaineer himself 

 Thus, m his various matrimonial episodes, he treated his dusky 

 sjposas with all the consideration the sex could possibly demand 

 from hand of man. No squaw of his ever humped shoulder to re- 

 ceive a castigatory and marital "lodge-poling" for ofiense domes- 

 tic ; but often has his helpmate blushed to see her pale-face lord 

 and master devote himself to the feminine labor of packing huge 

 piles of fire-wood on his back, felling trees, butchering unwieldy 

 bufialo — all which are included in the Indian category of female 

 duties. Thus he was esteemed an excellent parti by all the mar- 

 riageable young squaws of Blackfbot, Crow, and Shoshone, of 

 lYutah, Shian, and Arapaho ; but after his last connubial catastro- 



