Old Bear-Paw, The Trapper King: The Love of a Blackfoot Queen
9781465679666
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
I wonder what has become of that everlasting Yankee? He promised to meet me here at noon, yet I have stood here and seen the shadows of these old pines lengthen for the last hour. Surely something must have happened to detain him, for he never deceived me yet, and I do not like to believe he will commence now— "Yew are 'tarnal right; he won't!" interrupted the second speaker, who was no other than the "everlasting Yankee" himself. Thus soliloquized the celebrated scout, Lew Kelly, and thus replied his tried friend and companion, Jehiel Filkins, as they stood upon a peak of the Black Hills, west a five-day's ride from Fort Randall—the nearest place where white men could be found, for they were already in the hunting-grounds of the Blackfeet. The two scouts, well-mounted, and armed to the teeth, were spending a sort of vacation in that dreaded vicinity to satisfy themselves as to the truth of certain rumors, rife at Fort Randall and Yankton, concerning the gold, which it was asserted was laying around loose in the ravines and damp, dark gulches of the Black Hills; and of the existence, in the hills and valleys of the North-west, of bear, elk, antelope and beaver, which an adventurous scout had asserted made that country a perfect paradise for the hunter and trapper. They had gone far enough, and seen enough to convince them that there was good foundation for these rumors. Gold they had found in the black sand washed down from the hills, and in the quartz ledges underlying or jutting out from the very crag upon which they stood. As to game, they wondered they had not heard of it before, so abundant was it. "What was you sayin', Lew?" asked Filkins. "Are you getting in a hurry to go home? Wal, I ain't, then. There ain't an Ingin within forty miles of here, and if there was I know you would not be afeared of them; but if you will wait just a week longer I will go anywhere with you, if it's to Halifax." "You said those same words, ten days ago, Jehiel, yet here we are, a hundred miles further west than we were then." "Sartin!" replied Jehiel. "But what's the hurry, Lew? You're too old a scout to get homesick so soon; I wouldn't." "Mighty good reason why you wouldn't, and why you never tire out or get homesick. Your home is wherever you happen to find yourself, and you care for nothing but that old coat of yours. Besides, you forget that away over the hills there a dear little wife is waiting and watching for me, and no doubt alarmed at my protracted stay."
