292 AN OLD HUNTER. 



Bridger, and had spent many winters in the mountains. He 

 had been wounded twice, and more than once had escaped 

 with the loss of everything. When he was twenty he married 

 a Bannock squaw, and he assured me that an Indian wife was 

 worth several white ones, as they would do more work, and 

 you could always beat them when they did not obey you, and 

 send them back to their people when you were tired of them. 

 He seemed, however, to have been very fond of his squaw, for 

 when she was killed in a fight with the Sioux he left his 

 companions and had lived as a solitary trapper ever since. He 

 was, he said, known to so many Indians that none of them 

 would injure him, and he offered to take me to the hostile 

 Sioux camp, which was then he said about forty miles south 

 of where he was then living, and he assured me that they 

 would not touch a friend of his ; this kind offer I, however, 

 declined, neither having time to do so nor caring to risk it. He 

 gave me a dinner of beaver tail, of which he had a great store, 

 but I fear I did not appreciate it, though it is considered a great 

 delicacy, as it was almost solid fat ; and I bade him good-bye, 

 hoping I might see him on my way home in the winter ; but, 

 poor old fellow ! he was dead before then, being found by a pass- 

 ing steamer lying dead near his hut about a month after I saw 

 him. It was thought that he had been killed by a man who 

 had been trapping near him on the river, as they were known 

 to have quarrelled/ but there was no way of proving it. 

 Appearances, however, were so against this man, that if 

 he had not left that part of the country he would have 

 been lynched. 



Seven days after leaving Bismarck we reached Buford, the 

 steamer having been very much delayed by the low state of the 



