CHAPTER VIII. 



Again we must take a jump with La Bonte over a space of 

 several months : when we find him, in company of half a dozen 

 trappers, among them his inseparable companero Killbuck, camped 

 on the Greenhorn Creek, en route to the settlements of New 

 Mexico. They have a few mules packed with heaver for the 

 Taos market : hut this expedition has been planned more for 

 pleasure than profit — a journey to Taos valley being the only 

 civilized relaxation coveted by the mountaineers. Not a few of 

 the present band are bound thither with matrimonial intentions ; 

 the belles of Nuevo Mejico being to them the ne 'plu?> ultra of 

 female perfection, uniting most conspicuous personal charms (al- 

 though coated with cosmetic alegria — an herb, with the juice of 

 which the women of Mexico hideously bedaub their faces), with 

 all the hard-working industry of Indian squaws. The ladies, on 

 their part, do not hesitate to leave the paternal abodes, and eternal 

 tortilla-making, to share the perils and privations of the American 

 mountaineers in the distant wilderness. Utterly despising their 

 own countrymen, whom they are used to contrast with the dashing 

 white hunters who swagger in all the pride of fringe and leather 

 through their towns — they, as is but natural, gladly accept hus- 

 bands from the latter class ; preferring the stranger, who possesses 

 the heart and strong right arm to defend them, to the miserable 

 cowardly " Pelados," who hold what little they have on sufi^erance 

 of savage Indians, but one degree superior to themselves. 



Certainly no band of hunters that ever appeared in the vale of 



