"'A sight, marm, this coon's gone over, if that's the way your stick floats. * I've trapped beaver on Platte and Arkansa, and away up on Missoura and Yaller Stone; I've trapped on Columbia, on Lewis Fork, and Green River; I've trapped, marm, on Grand River and the Heely (Gila). I've fout the Blackfoot (and d------d bad Injuns they are); I've raised the hair * of more than one Apach, and made a Rapaho 'come' afore now; I've trapped in heav'n, in airth, and h----; and scalp my old head, marm, but I've seen a putrefied forest.' * Meaning--if that's what you mean. The "stick" is tied to the beaver-trap by a string, and, floating on the water, points out its position, should a beaver have carried it away. "'La, Mister Harris, a what?' "'A putrefied forest, marm, as sure as my rifle's got hind-sights, and _she_ shoots center. I was out on the Black Hills, Bill Sublette knows the time--the year it rained fire--and everybody knows when that was. If thar wasn't cold doins about that time, this child wouldn't say so. The snow was about fifty foot deep, and the bufler lay dead on the ground like bees after a beein'; not whar we was tho', for thar was no bufler, and no meat, and me and my band had been livin' on our moccasins (leastwise the parflesh **) for six weeks; and poor doins that feedin' is, marm, as you'll never know. One day we crossed a canyon and over a divide, and got into a peraira, whar was green grass, and green trees, and green leaves on the trees, and birds singing in the green leaves, and this in Febrary, wagh! Our animals was like to die when they see the green grass, and we all sung out, "Hurraw for summer doins." * Scalped. ** Soles made of buffalo hide. "'"Hyar goes for meat," says I, and I jest ups old Ginger at one of them singing-birds, and down come the crittur elegant; its darned head spinning away from the body, but never stops singing; and when I takes up the meat, I finds it stone, wagh! "Hyar's damp powder and no fire to dry it," I says, quite skeared. "'"Fire be dogged," says old Rube. "Hyar's a hoss, as'll make fire come," and with that he takes his axe and lets drive at a cotton wood. Schr-u-k--goes the axe agin the tree, and out comes a bit of the blade as big as my hand. We looks at the animals, and thar they stood shaking over the grass, which I'm dog-gone if it wasn't stone, too. Young Sublette comes up, and he'd been clerking down to the fort on Platte, so he know'd something. He looks and looks, and scrapes the trees with his butcher knife, and snaps the grass like pipe-stems, and breaks the leaves a-snappin' like Californy shells. "'"What's all this, boy?" I asks. "'"Putrefactions," says he, looking smart; "putrefactions, or I'm a nigger."' "'La, Mister Harris,' says the lady, 'putrefactions! why, did the leaves and the trees and the grass smell badly?'