The next morning, Killbuck's leg was greatly inflamed, and he was
unable to leave the lodge; but he made his companion bring the old
mule to the door, that he might give her a couple of ears of Indian
corn, the last remains of the slender store brought by the Indians
from the Navajo country. The day passed, and sundown brought no
tidings of the war-party. This caused no little wailing on the part of
the squaws, but was interpreted by the whites as a favourable augury.
A little after sunrise, on the second morning, the long line of the
returning warriors was discerned winding over the prairie, and a scout
having galloped in to bring the news of a great victory, the whole
village was soon in a ferment of paint and drumming. A short distance
from the lodges, the warriors halted to await the approach of the
people. Old men, children, and squaws sitting astride their horses,
sallied out to escort the victorious party in triumph to the village.
With loud shouts and songs, and drums beating the monotonous Indian
time, they advanced and encircled the returning braves, one of whom,
his face covered with black paint, carried a pole on which dangled
thirteen scalps, the trophies of the expedition. As he lifted these on
high, they were saluted with deafening whoops and cries of exultation
and savage joy. In this manner they entered the village, almost before
the friends of those fallen in the fight had ascertained their losses.
Then the shouts of delight were converted into yells of grief; the
mothers and wives of those braves who had been killed (and seven had
“gone under”) presently returned with their faces, necks, and hands
blackened, and danced and howled round the scalp-pole, which had been
deposited in the centre of the village, in front of the lodge of the
great chief.
Killbuck now learned that a scout having brought intelligence that
the two bands of Rapahos were hastening to form a junction, as soon
as they learned that their approach was discovered, the Yutas had
successfully prevented it; and attacking one party, had entirely
defeated it, killing thirteen of the Rapaho braves. The other party
had fled on seeing the issue of the fight, and a few of the Yuta
warriors were now pursuing them.
To celebrate so signal a victory, great preparations sounded their
notes through the village. Paints,—vermilion and ochres—red and
yellow,—were in great request; whilst the scrapings of charred wood,
mixed with gunpowder, were used as substitute for black, the medicine
colour.
The lodges of the village, numbering some two hundred or more, were
erected in parallel lines, and covered a large space of the level
prairie in shape of a parallelogram. In the centre, however, the
space which half a dozen lodges in length would have taken up was
left unoccupied, save by one large one, of red-painted buffalo skins,
tatooed with the mystic totems of the “medicine” peculiar to the
nation. In front of this stood the grim scalp-pole, like a decayed
tree trunk, its bloody fruit tossing in the wind; and on another
pole, at a few feet distance, was hung the “bag” with its mysterious
contents. Before each lodge a tripod of spears supported the arms and
shields of the Yuta chivalry, and on many of them, smoke-dried scalps
rattled in the wind, former trophies of the dusky knights who were
arming themselves within. Heraldic devices were not wanting,—not,
however, graved upon the shield, but hanging from the spear-head,
the actual “totem” of the warrior it distinguished. The rattlesnake,
the otter, the carcagien, the mountain badger, the war-eagle, the
kon-qua-kish, the porcupine, the fox, &c., dangled their well-stuffed
skins, displaying the guardian “medicine” of the warriors they
pertained to, and representing the mental and corporeal qualities
which were supposed to characterise the braves to whom they belonged.
From the centre lodge, two or three “medicine men,” fantastically
attired in the skins of wolves and bears, and bearing long peeled
wands of cherry in their hands, occasionally emerged to tend a
very small fire which they had kindled in the centre of the open
space; and, when a thin column of smoke arose, one of them planted
the scalp-pole obliquely across the fire. Squaws in robes of white
dressed buckskin, garnished with beads and porcupines' quills, and
their faces painted bright red and black, then appeared. These ranged
themselves round the outside of the square, the boys and children of
all ages, mounted on bare-backed horses, galloping round and round,
and screaming with eagerness, excitement, and curiosity.
Presently the braves and warriors made their appearance, and squatted
round the fire in two circles, those who had been engaged on the
expedition being in the first or smaller one. One medicine man sat
under the scalp-pole, having a drum between his knees, which he tapped
at intervals with his hand, eliciting from the instrument a hollow
monotonous sound. A bevy of women, shoulder to shoulder, then advanced
from the four sides of the square, and some, shaking a rattle-drum in
time with their steps, commenced a jumping jerking dance, now lifting
one foot from the ground, and now rising with both, accompanying the
dance with a chant, which swelled from a low whisper to the utmost
extent of their voices—now dying away, and again bursting into
vociferous measure. Thus they advanced to the centre and retreated
to their former positions; when six squaws, with their faces painted
a dead black, made their appearance from the crowd, chanting, in
soft and sweet measure, a lament for the braves the nation had lost
in the late battle: but soon as they drew near the scalp-pole, their
melancholy note changed to the music (to them) of gratified revenge.
In a succession of jumps, raising the feet alternately but a little
distance from the ground, they made their way, through an interval
left in the circle of warriors, to the grim pole, and encircling
it, danced in perfect silence round it for a few moments. Then they
burst forth with an extempore song, laudatory of the achievements of
their victorious braves. They addressed the scalps as “sisters” (to
be called a squaw is the greatest insult that can be offered to an
Indian), and, spitting at them, upbraided them with their rashness
in leaving their lodges to seek for Yuta husbands; “that the Yuta
warriors and young men despised them, and chastised them for their
forwardness and presumption, bringing back their scalps to their own
women.”
After sufficiently proving that they had any thing but lost the use
of their tongues, but possessed, on the contrary, as fair a length
of that formidable weapon as any of their sex, they withdrew, and
left the field in undisputed possession of the men: who, accompanied
by tap of drum, and by the noise of many rattles, broke out into
a war-song, in which their own valour was by no means hidden in a
bushel, or modestly refused the light of day. After this came the
more interesting ceremony of a warrior “counting his coups.”
A young brave, with his face painted black, mounted on a white horse
mysteriously marked with red clay, and naked to the breech-clout,
holding in his hand a long taper lance, rode into the circle, and
paced slowly round it; then, flourishing his spear on high, he darted
to the scalp-pole, round which the warriors were now seated in a
semicircle; and in a loud voice, and with furious gesticulations,
related his exploits, the drums tapping at the conclusion of each.
On his spear hung seven scalps, and holding it vertically above his
head, and commencing with the top one, he told the feats in which he
had raised the trophy hair. When he had run through these, the drums
tapped loudly, and several of the old chiefs shook their rattles, in
corroboration of the truth of his achievements. The brave, swelling
with pride, then pointed to the fresh and bloody scalps hanging on the
pole. Two of these had been torn from the heads of Rapahos struck by
his own hand, and this feat, _the_ exploit of the day, had entitled
him to the honour of counting his coups. Then, sticking his spear
into the ground by the side of the pole, he struck his hand twice on
his brawny and naked chest, turned short round, and, swift as the
antelope, galloped into the plain: as if overcome by the shock his
modesty had received in being obliged to recount his own high-sounding
deeds.
“Wagh!” exclaimed old Killbuck, as he left the circle, pointing his
pipe-stem towards the fast-fading figure of the brave, “that Injun's
heart's about as big as ever it will be, I'm thinking.”
With the Yutas, Killbuck and La Bonté remained during the winter;
and when the spring sun had opened the ice-bound creeks, and melted
the snow on the mountains, and its genial warmth had expanded the
earth and permitted the roots of the grass to “live” once more, and
throw out green and tender shoots, the two trappers bade adieu to the
hospitable Indians, who broke up their village in order to start for
the valleys of the Del Norte. As they followed the trail from the
bayou, at sundown, just as they thought of camping, they observed
ahead of them a solitary horseman riding along, followed by three
mules. His hunting-frock of fringed buckskin, and the rifle resting
across the horn of his saddle, at once proclaimed him white; but as he
saw the mountaineers winding through the cañon, driving before them
half a dozen horses, _he_ judged they might possibly be Indians and
enemies, the more so as their dress was not the usual costume of the
whites. The trappers, therefore, saw the stranger raise the rifle in
the hollow of his arm, and, gathering up his horse, ride steadily to
meet them, as soon as he observed they were but two; two to one in
mountain calculation being scarcely considered odds, if red skin to
white.
However, on nearing them, the stranger discovered his mistake; and,
throwing his rifle across the saddle once more, reined in his horse
and waited their approach; for the spot where he then stood presented
an excellent camping-ground, with abundance of dry wood and convenient
water.
“Where from, stranger?”
“The divide, and to the bayou for meat; and you are from there, I see.
Any buffalo come in yet?”
“Heap, and seal-fat at that. What's the sign out on the plains?”
“War-party of Rapahos passed Squirrel at sundown yesterday, and nearly
raised my animals. Sign, too, of more on left fork of Boiling Spring.
No buffalo between this and Bijou. Do you feel like camping?”
“_Well_, we do. But whar's your companyeros?”
“I'm alone.”
“Alone! Wagh! how do you get your animals along?”
“I go ahead, and they follow the horse.”
“Well, that beats all! That's a smart-looking hos now; and runs some,
I'm thinking.”
“Well, it does.”
“Whar's them mules from? They look like Californy.”
“Mexican country—away down south.”
“H—! Whar's yourself from?”
“There away, too.”
“What's beaver worth in Taos?”
“Dollar.”
“In Saint Louiy?”
“Same.”
“H—! Any call for buckskin?”
“A heap! The soldiers in Santa Fé are half froze for leather; and
moccasins fetch two dollars, easy.”
“Wagh! How's trade on Arkansa, and what's doin to the Fort?”
“Shians at Big Timber, and Bent's people trading smart. On North Fork,
Jim Waters got a hundred pack right off, and Sioux making more.”
“Whar's Bill Williams?”
“Gone under, they say: the Diggers took his hair.”
“How's powder goin?”
“Two dollars a pint.”
“Bacca?”
“A plew a plug.”
“Got any about you?”
“Have _so_.”
“Give us a chaw; and now let's camp.”
Whilst unpacking their own animals, the two trappers could not refrain
from glancing, every now and then, with no little astonishment, at the
solitary stranger they had so unexpectedly encountered. If truth be
told, his appearance not a little perplexed them. His hunting-frock
of buckskin, shining with grease, and fringed pantaloons, over which
the well-greased butcher-knife had evidently been often wiped after
cutting his food, or butchering the carcass of deer and buffalo,
were of genuine mountain make. His face, clean shaved, exhibited in
its well-tanned and weather-beaten complexion, the effects of such
natural cosmetics as sun and wind; and under the mountain hat of felt
which covered his head, long uncut hair hung in Indian fashion on his
shoulders. All this would have passed muster, had it not been for the
most extraordinary equipment of a double-barrelled rifle; which, when
it had attracted the eyes of the mountaineers, elicited no little
astonishment, not to say derision. But, perhaps, nothing excited their
admiration so much as the perfect docility of the stranger's animals;
which, almost like dogs, obeyed his voice and call; and albeit that
one, in a small sharp head and pointed ears, expanded nostrils, and
eye twinkling and malicious, exhibited the personification of a
“lurking devil,” yet they could not but admire the perfect ease with
which even this one, in common with the rest, permitted herself to be
handled.
Dismounting, and unhitching from the horn of his saddle the coil of
skin rope, one end of which was secured round the neck of the horse,
he proceeded to unsaddle; and whilst so engaged, the three mules, two
of which were packed, one with the unbutchered carcass of a deer, the
other with a pack of skins, &c., followed leisurely into the space
chosen for the camp, and, cropping the grass at their ease, waited
until a whistle called them to be unpacked.
The horse was a strong square-built bay; and, although the severities
of a prolonged winter, with scanty pasture and long and trying travel,
had robbed his bones of fat and flesh, tucked up his flank, and
“ewed” his neck; still his clean and well-set legs, oblique shoulder,
and withers fine as a deer's, in spite of his gaunt half-starved
appearance, bore ample testimony as to what he _had_ been; while his
clear cheerful eye, and the hearty appetite with which he fell to work
on the coarse grass of the bottom, proved that he had something in him
still, and was game as ever. His tail, gnawed by the mules in days of
strait, attracted the observant mountaineers.
“Hard doins when it come to that,” remarked La Bonté.
Between the horse and two of the mules a mutual and great affection
appeared to subsist, which was no more than natural, when their master
observed to his companions that they had travelled together upwards of
two thousand miles.
One of these mules was a short, thick-set, stumpy animal, with an
enormous head surmounted by proportionable ears, and a pair of
unusually large eyes, beaming the most perfect good temper and
docility (most uncommon qualities in a mule.) Her neck was thick,
and rendered more so in appearance by reason of her mane not being
roached, (or, in English, hogged), which privilege she alone enjoyed
of the trio; and her short, strong legs, ending in small, round,
cat-like hoofs, were feathered with a profusion of dark brown hair.
As she stood stock-still, whilst the stranger removed the awkwardly
packed deer from her back, she flapped her huge ears backward and
forward, occasionally turning her head, and laying her cold nose
against her master's cheek. When the pack was removed, he advanced
to her head, and resting it on his shoulder, rubbed her broad and
grizzled cheeks with both his hands for several minutes, the old
mule laying her ears, like a rabbit, back upon her neck, and with
half-closed eyes enjoyed mightily the manipulation. Then, giving her a
smack upon the haunch, and a “hep-a” well known to the mule kind, the
old favourite threw up her heels and cantered off to the horse, who
was busily cropping the buffalo grass on the bluff above the stream.
Great was the contrast between the one just described and the next
which came up to be divested of her pack. She, a tall beautifully
shaped Mexican mule, of a light mouse colour, with a head like a
deer's, and long springy legs, trotted up obedient to the call, but
with ears bent back and curled up nose, and tail compressed between
her legs. As her pack was being removed, she groaned and whined like a
dog, as a thong or loosened strap touched her ticklish body, lifting
her hind-quarters in a succession of jumps or preparatory kicks, and
looking wicked as a panther. When nothing but the fore pack-saddle
remained, she had worked herself into the last stage; and as the
stranger cast loose the girth of buffalo hide, and was about to lift
the saddle and draw the crupper from the tail, she drew her hind legs
under her, more tightly compressed her tail, and almost shrieked with
rage.
“Stand clear,” he roared (knowing what was coming), and raised the
saddle, when out went her hind legs, up went the pack into the
air, and, with it dangling at her heels, away she tore, kicking
the offending saddle as she ran. Her master, however, took this as
matter of course, followed her and brought back the saddle, which he
piled on the others to windward of the fire one of the trappers was
kindling. Fire-making is a simple process with the mountaineers. Their
bullet-pouches always contain a flint and steel, and sundry pieces of
“punk”[16] or tinder; and pulling a handful of dry grass, which they
screw into a nest, they place the lighted punk in this, and, closing
the grass over it, wave it in the air, when it soon ignites, and
readily kindles the dry sticks forming the foundation of the fire.
The tit-bits of the deer the stranger had brought in were soon
roasting over the fire; whilst, as soon as the burning logs had
deposited a sufficiency of ashes, a hole was raked in them, and the
head of the deer, skin, hair, and all, placed in this primitive oven,
and carefully covered with the hot ashes.
A “heap” of “fat meat” in perspective, our mountaineers enjoyed their
ante-prandial pipes, recounting the news of the respective regions
whence they came; and so well did they like each other's company, so
sweet was the “honey-dew” tobacco of which the strange hunter had
good store, so plentiful the game about the creek, and so abundant
the pasture for their winter-starved animals, that before the carcass
of the “two-year” buck had been more than four-fifths consumed;
and, although rib after rib had been picked and chucked over their
shoulders to the wolves, and one fore leg and _the_ “bit” of all,
the head, were still cooked before them,—the three had come to the
resolution to join company, and hunt in their present locality for a
few days at least—the owner of the “two-shoot” gun volunteering to
fill their horns with powder, and find tobacco for their pipes.
Here, on plenty of meat, of venison, bear, and antelope, they merrily
luxuriated; returning after their daily hunts to the brightly burning
camp-fire, where one always remained to guard the animals, and
unloading their packs of meat, (all choicest portions), ate late into
the night, and, smoking, wiled away the time in narrating scenes in
their hard-spent lives, and fighting their battles o'er again.
The younger of the trappers, he who has figured under the name of La
Bonté, had excited, by scraps and patches from his history, no little
curiosity in the stranger's mind to learn the ups and downs of his
career; and one night, when they assembled earlier than usual at the
fire, he prevailed upon the modest trapper to “unpack” some passages
in his wild adventurous life.
“Maybe,” commenced the mountaineer, “you both remember when old Ashley
went out with the biggest kind of band to trap the Columbia, and
head-waters of Missoura and Yellow Stone. Well, that was the time this
niggur first felt like taking to the mountains.”
This brings us back to the year of our Lord 1825; and perhaps it
will be as well, in order to render La Bonté's mountain language
intelligible, to translate it at once into tolerable English, and to
tell in the third person, but from his own lips, the scrapes which
befell him in a sojourn of more than twenty years in the Far West, and
the causes that impelled him to quit the comfort and civilisation of
his home, to seek the perilous but engaging life of a trapper of the
Rocky Mountains.
La Bonté was raised in the state of Mississippi, not far from Memphis,
on the left bank of that huge and snag-filled river. His father was a
Saint Louis Frenchman, his mother a native of Tennessee. When a boy,
our trapper was “some,” he said, with the rifle, and always had a
hankering for the west; particularly when, on accompanying his father
to Saint Louis every spring, he saw the different bands of traders
and hunters start upon their annual expeditions to the mountains.
Greatly did he envy the independent, _insouciant_ trappers, as, in all
the glory of beads and buckskin, they shouldered their rifles at Jake
Hawkin's door (the rifle-maker of St Louis), and bade adieu to the
cares and trammels of civilised life.
However, like a thoughtless beaver-kitten, he put his foot into a trap
one fine day, set by Mary Brand, a neighbour's daughter, and esteemed
“some punkins,” or in other words toasted as the beauty of Memphis
County, by the susceptible Mississippians. From that moment he was
“gone beaver;” “he felt queer,” he said, “all over, like a buffalo
shot in the lights; he had no relish for mush and molasses; homminy
and johnny cakes failed to excite his appetite. Deer and turkeys ran
by him unscathed; he didn't know, he said, whether his rifle had
hind-sights or not. He felt bad, that was a fact; but what ailed him
he didn't know.”
Mary Brand—Mary Brand—Mary Brand! the old Dutch clock ticked it. Mary
Brand! his head throbbed it when he lay down to sleep. Mary Brand!
his rifle-lock spoke it plainly when he cocked it, to raise a shaking
sight at a deer. Mary Brand, Mary Brand! the whip-poor-will sung it,
instead of her own well-known note; the bull-frogs croaked it in the
swamp, and mosquitoes droned it in his ear as he tossed about his bed
at night, wakeful, and striving to think what ailed him.
Who could that strapping young fellow, who passed the door just now,
be going to see? Mary Brand: Mary Brand. And who can Big Pete Herring
be dressing that silver fox-skin so carefully for? For whom but Mary
Brand? And who is it that jokes, and laughs, and dances, with all the
“boys” but him; and why?
Who but Mary Brand: and because the love-sick booby carefully avoids
her.
“And Mary Brand herself—what is she like?”
“She's 'some' now; that _is_ a fact, and the biggest kind of punkin
at that,” would have been the answer from any man, woman, or child in
Memphis County, and truly spoken, too; always understanding that the
pumpkin is the fruit by which the _ne-plus-ultra_ of female perfection
is expressed amongst the figuratively-speaking westerns.
Being an American woman, of course she was tall, and straight and
slim as a hickory sapling, well formed withal, with rounded bust, and
neck white and slender as the swan's. Her features were small, but
finely chiselled; and in this, it may be remarked, the lower orders
of the American women differ from, and far surpass the same class in
England, or elsewhere, where the features, although far prettier, are
more vulgar and commonplace. Mary Brand had the bright blue eye, thin
nose, and small but sweetly-formed mouth, the too fair complexion and
dark brown hair, which characterise the beauty of the Anglo-American,
the heavy masses (hardly curls), that fell over her face and neck,
contrasting with their polished whiteness. Such was Mary Brand: and
when to her good looks are added a sweet disposition, and all the best
qualities of a thrifty housewife, it must be allowed that she fully
justified the eulogiums of the good people of Memphis.
Well, to cut a love-story short, in doing which not a little moral
courage is shown, young La Bonté fell desperately in love with the
pretty Mary, and she with him; and small blame to her, for he was a
proper lad of twenty—six feet in his moccasins—the best hunter and
rifle-shot in the country, with many other advantages too numerous to
mention. But when did the course, &c. e'er run smooth? When the affair
had become a recognised “courting” (and Americans alone know the
horrors of such prolonged purgatory), they became, to use La Bonté's
words, “awful fond,” and consequently about once a-week had their
tiffs and makes-up.
However, on one occasion, at a “husking,” and during one of these
tiffs, Mary, every inch a woman, to gratify some indescribable
feeling, brought to her aid jealousy—that old serpent who has caused
such mischief in this world; and by a flirtation over the corn-cobs
with Big Pete, La Bonté's former and only rival, struck so hard a blow
at the latter's heart, that on the moment his brain caught fire,
blood danced before his eyes, and he became like one possessed. Pete
observed and enjoyed his struggling emotion—better for him had he
minded his corn-shelling alone;—and the more to annoy his rival, paid
the most sedulous attention to pretty Mary.
Young La Bonté stood it as long as human nature, at boiling heat,
could endure; but when Pete, in the exultation of his apparent
triumph, crowned his success by encircling the slender waist of the
girl with his arm, and snatching a sudden kiss, he jumped upright from
his seat, and seizing a small whisky-keg which stood in the centre
of the corn-shellers, he hurled it at his rival, and crying to him,
hoarse with passion, “to follow if he was a man,” he left the house.
At that time, and even now, in the remoter states of the western
country, rifles settled even the most trivial differences between the
hot-blooded youths; and of such frequent occurrence and invariably
bloody termination did these encounters become, that they scarcely
produced sufficient excitement to draw together half-a-dozen
spectators.
In the present case, however, so public was the quarrel, and so
well known the parties concerned, that not only the people who had
witnessed the affair, but all the neighbourhood, thronged to the
scene of action, in a large field in front of the house, where the
preliminaries of a duel between Pete and La Bonté were being arranged
by their respective friends.
Mary, when she discovered the mischief her thoughtlessness was likely
to occasion, was almost beside herself with grief, but she knew how
vain it would be to attempt to interfere. The poor girl, who was most
ardently attached to La Bonté, was carried, swooning, into the house,
where all the women congregated, and were locked in by old Brand, who,
himself an old pioneer, thought but little of bloodshed, but refused
to let the “women folk” witness the affray.
Preliminaries arranged, the combatants took up their respective
positions at either end of a space marked for the purpose, at forty
paces from each other. They were both armed with heavy rifles, and
had the usual hunting-pouches, containing ammunition, hanging over
the shoulder. Standing with the butts of their rifles on the ground,
they confronted each other, and the crowd drawing away a few paces
only on each side, left one man to give the word. This was the single
word “fire;” and, after this signal was given, the combatants were at
liberty to fire away until one or the other dropped.
At the word, both the men quickly raised their rifles to the shoulder,
and, whilst the sharp cracks instantaneously rang, they were seen to
flinch, as either felt the pinging sensation of a bullet entering his
flesh. Regarding each other steadily for a few moments, the blood
running down La Bonté's neck from a wound under the left jaw, whilst
his opponent was seen to place his hand once to his right breast, as
if to feel the position of his wound, they commenced reloading their
rifles. But, as Pete was in the act of forcing down the ball with his
long hickory wiping-stick, he suddenly dropped his right arm—the rifle
slipped from his grasp—and, reeling for a moment like a drunken man—he
fell dead to the ground.
Even here, however, there was law of some kind or another, and the
consequences of the duel were, that the constables were soon on the
trail of La Bonté to arrest him. He easily avoided them, and taking to
the woods, lived for several days in as wild a state as the beasts he
hunted and killed for his support.
Tired of this, he at last resolved to quit the country, and betake
himself to the mountains, for which life he had ever felt an
inclination.
When, therefore, he thought the officers of justice had grown slack in
their search of him, and that the coast was comparatively clear, he
determined to start on his distant expedition to the Far West.
Once more, before he carried his project into execution, he sought and
obtained a last interview with Mary Brand.
“Mary,” said he, “I'm about to break. They're hunting me like a fall
buck, and I'm bound to quit. Don't think any more about me, for I
shall never come back.”
Poor Mary burst into tears, and bent her head on the table near which
she sat. When she again raised it, she saw La Bonté, his long rifle
upon his shoulder, striding with rapid steps from the house. Year
after year rolled on, and he did not return.