Being Mortally Afraid Of Jim Gurney,
He Kept Close In The Neighborhood Of Our Tent.
As he had seen an
abundance of low dissipated life, and had a considerable fund of
humor, his anecdotes were extremely amusing, especially since he
never hesitated to place himself in a ludicrous point of view,
provided he could raise a laugh by doing so.
Tete Rouge, however,
was sometimes rather troublesome; he had an inveterate habit of
pilfering provisions at all times of the day. He set ridicule at
utter defiance; and being without a particle of self-respect, he
would never have given over his tricks, even if they had drawn upon
him the scorn of the whole party. Now and then, indeed, something
worse than laughter fell to his share; on these occasions he would
exhibit much contrition, but half an hour after we would generally
observe him stealing round to the box at the back of the cart and
slyly making off with the provisions which Delorier had laid by for
supper. He was very fond of smoking; but having no tobacco of his
own, we used to provide him with as much as he wanted, a small piece
at a time. At first we gave him half a pound together, but this
experiment proved an entire failure, for he invariably lost not only
the tobacco, but the knife intrusted to him for cutting it, and a few
minutes after he would come to us with many apologies and beg for
more.
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