As The Colonel Spoke, I Looked Round On The Wild Assemblage,
And Could Not Help Thinking That He Was But Ill Qualified To Conduct
Such Men Across The Desert To California.
Conspicuous among the rest
stood three tail young men, grandsons of Daniel Boone.
They had
clearly inherited the adventurous character of that prince of
pioneers; but I saw no signs of the quiet and tranquil spirit that so
remarkably distinguished him.
Fearful was the fate that months after overtook some of the members
of that party. General Kearny, on his late return from California,
brought in the account how they were interrupted by the deep snows
among the mountains, and maddened by cold and hunger fed upon each
other's flesh.
I got tired of the confusion. "Come, Paul," said I, "we will be
off." Paul sat in the sun, under the wall of the fort. He jumped
up, mounted, and we rode toward Fort Laramie. When we reached it, a
man came out of the gate with a pack at his back and a rifle on his
shoulder; others were gathering about him, shaking him by the hand, as
if taking leave. I thought it a strange thing that a man should set
out alone and on foot for the prairie. I soon got an explanation.
Perrault - this, if I recollect right was the Canadian's name - had
quarreled with the bourgeois, and the fort was too hot to hold him.
Bordeaux, inflated with his transient authority, had abused him, and
received a blow in return. The men then sprang at each other, and
grappled in the middle of the fort. Bordeaux was down in an instant,
at the mercy of the incensed Canadian; had not an old Indian, the
brother of his squaw, seized hold of his antagonist, he would have
fared ill. Perrault broke loose from the old Indian, and both the
white men ran to their rooms for their guns; but when Bordeaux,
looking from his door, saw the Canadian, gun in hand, standing in the
area and calling on him to come out and fight, his heart failed him;
he chose to remain where he was. In vain the old Indian, scandalized
by his brother-in-law's cowardice, called upon him to go upon the
prairie and fight it out in the white man's manner; and Bordeaux's
own squaw, equally incensed, screamed to her lord and master that he
was a dog and an old woman. It all availed nothing. Bordeaux's
prudence got the better of his valor, and he would not stir.
Perrault stood showering approbrious epithets at the recent
bourgeois. Growing tired of this, he made up a pack of dried meat,
and slinging it at his back, set out alone for Fort Pierre on the
Missouri, a distance of three hundred miles, over a desert country
full of hostile Indians.
I remained in the fort that night. In the morning, as I was coming
out from breakfast, conversing with a trader named McCluskey, I saw a
strange Indian leaning against the side of the gate.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 84 of 251
Words from 42889 to 43400
of 129303
