The Horse Of The Young Bostonian,
Who Was In Front, Wheeled Round With Affright, And Threw His
Unskilled Rider.
The young man scrambled up the side of the hill,
but, unaccustomed to such wild scenes, lost his presence of mind,
and stood, as if paralyzed, on the edge of a bank, until the
Blackfeet came up and slew him on the spot.
His comrades had fled
on the first alarm; but two of them, Foy and Stephens, seeing his
danger, paused when they got half way up the hill, turned back,
dismounted, and hastened to his assistance. Foy was instantly
killed. Stephens was severely wounded, but escaped, to die five
days afterward. The survivors returned to the camp of Captain
Sublette, bringing tidings of this new disaster. That hardy
leader, as soon as he could bear the journey, set out on his
return to St. Louis, accompanied by Campbell. As they had a
number of pack-horses richly laden with peltries to convoy, they
chose a different route through the mountains, out of the way, as
they hoped, of the lurking bands of Blackfeet. They succeeded in
making the frontier in safety. We remember to have seen them with
their band, about two or three months afterward, passing through
a skirt of woodland in the upper part of Missouri. Their long
cavalcade stretched in single file for nearly half a mile.
Sublette still wore his arm in a sling. The mountaineers in their
rude hunting dresses, armed with rifles and roughly mounted, and
leading their pack-horses down a hill of the forest, looked like
banditti returning with plunder.
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