Mr. Crooks Made All
Haste Back To The Camp, Rejoicing At His Escape, And Determining
Never To Stir Out Again Without His Rifle.
A few days after this
circumstance, a grizzly bear was shot in the neighborhood by Mr.
Miller.
As the slaughter of so many buffaloes had provided the party with
beef for the winter, in case they met with no further supply,
they now set to work, heart and hand, to build a comfortable
wigwam. In a little while the woody promontory rang with the
unwonted sound of the axe. Some of its lofty trees were laid low,
and by the second evening the cabin was complete. It was eight
feet wide, and eighteen feet long. The walls were six feet high,
and the whole was covered with buffalo skins. The fireplace was
in the centre, and the smoke found its way out by a hole in the
roof.
The hunters were next sent out to procure deer-skins for
garments, moccasins, and other purposes. They made the mountains
echo with their rifles, and, in the course of two days' hunting,
killed twenty-eight bighorns and black-tailed deer.
The party now reveled in abundance. After all that they had
suffered from hunger, cold, fatigue and watchfulness; after all
their perils from treacherous and savage men, they exulted in the
snugness and security of their isolated cabin, hidden, as they
thought, even from the prying eyes of Indian scouts, and stored
with creature comforts; and they looked forward to a winter of
peace and quietness, of roasting, and boiling, and broiling, and
feasting upon venison, and mountain mutton, and bear's meat, and
marrow bones, and buffalo humps, and other hunter's dainties, and
of dozing and reposing round their fire, and gossiping over past
dangers and adventures, and telling long hunting stories, until
spring should return; when they would make canoes of buffalo
skins and float themselves down the river.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 491 of 615
Words from 131951 to 132271
of 165649
