He Had
At Different Times Been Clerk Of A Mississippi Steamboat, And Agent
In A Trading Establishment At Nauvoo, Besides Filling Various Other
Capacities, In All Of Which He Had Seen Much More Of "Life" Than Was
Good For Him.
In the spring, thinking that a summer's campaign would
be an agreeable recreation, he had joined a company of St. Louis
volunteers.
"There were three of us," said Tete Rouge, "me and Bill Stevens and
John Hopkins. We thought we would just go out with the army, and
when we had conquered the country, we would get discharged and take
our pay, you know, and go down to Mexico. They say there is plenty
of fun going on there. Then we could go back to New Orleans by way
of Vera Cruz."
But Tete Rouge, like many a stouter volunteer, had reckoned without
his host. Fighting Mexicans was a less amusing occupation than he
had supposed, and his pleasure trip was disagreeably interrupted by
brain fever, which attacked him when about halfway to Bent's Fort.
He jolted along through the rest of the journey in a baggage wagon.
When they came to the fort he was taken out and left there, together
with the rest of the sick. Bent's Fort does not supply the best
accommodations for an invalid. Tete Rouge's sick chamber was a
little mud room, where he and a companion attacked by the same
disease were laid together, with nothing but a buffalo robe between
them and the ground.
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