"Bill Bent--his boys camped the other side the trail, and they was all mountain men, wagh!--and Bill Williams, and Bill Tharpe (the Pawnees took his hair on Pawnee Fork last spring:) three Bills, and them three's all 'gone under.' Surely Hatcher went out that time; and wasn't Bill Garey along, too? Didn't him and Chabonard sit in camp for twenty hours at a deck of Euker? Them was Bent's Indian traders up on Arkansa. Poor Bill Bent! them Spaniards made meat of him. He lost his topknot to Taos. A 'clever' man was Bill Bent as _I_ ever know'd trade a robe or 'throw' a bufler in his tracks. Old St Vrain could knock the hind-sight off him though, when it come to shootin, and old silver heels spoke true, she did: 'plum-center' she was, eh?" "_Well_, she was'nt nothin else.'" "The Greasers[15] payed for Bent's scalp, they tell me. Old St Vrain went out of Santa Fé with a company of mountain men, and the way they made 'em sing out was 'slick as shootin'. He 'counted a coup' did St Vrain. He throwed a Pueblo as had on poor Bent's shirt. I guess he tickled that niggur's hump-ribs. Fort William[16] aint the lodge it was, an' never will be agin, now he's gone under; but St Vrain's 'pretty much of a gentleman,' too; if he aint, I'll be dog-gone, eh, Bill?" [15] The Mexicans are called "Spaniards" or "Greasers" (from their greasy appearance) by the Western people. [16] Bent's Indian trading fort on the Arkansa. "He is _so-o_." "Chavez had his waggons along. He was only a Spaniard any how, and some of his teamsters put a ball into him his next trip, and made a raise of _his_ dollars, wagh! Uncle Sam hung 'em for it, I heard, but can't b'lieve it, no-how. If them Spaniards wasn't born for shootin', why was beaver made? You was with us that spree, Jemmy?" "No _sirre-e_; I went out when Spiers lost his animals on Cimmaron: a hunderd and forty mules and oxen was froze that night, wagh!" "Surely Black Harris was thar; and the darndest liar was Black Harris--for lies tumbled out of his mouth like boudins out of a bufler's stomach. He was the child as saw the putrefied forest in the Black Hills. Black Harris come in from Laramie; he'd been trapping three year an' more on Platte and the 'other side;' and, when he got into Liberty, he fixed himself right off like a Saint Louiy dandy. Well, he sat to dinner one day in the tavern, and a lady says to him:-- "'Well, Mister Harris, I hear you're a great travler.' "'Travler, marm,' says Black Harris, 'this niggur's no travler; I ar' a trapper, marm, a mountain-man, wagh!" "'Well, Mister Harris, trappers are great travlers, and you goes over a sight of ground in your perishinations, I'll be bound to say.'