|AGAIN we must take a jump with La Bonté over a space of several months, when we find him in company of half-a-dozen trappers, amongst them his inseparable companero Killbuck, camped on the Greenhorn Creek, _en route_ to the settlements of New Mexico. They have a few mules packed with beaver for the Taos market; but this expedition has been planned more for pleasure than profit--a journey to Taos valley being the only civilized relaxation coveted by the mountaineers. Not a few of the present band are bound thither with matrimonial intentions; the belles of Nuevo Mejico being to them the _ne plus ultra_ of female perfection, uniting most conspicuous personal charms (although coated with cosmetic _alegria_--an herb, with the juice of which the women of Mexico hideously bedaub their faces) with all the hard-working industry of Indian squaws. The ladies, on their part, do not hesitate to leave the paternal abodes, and eternal tortilla-making, to share the perils and privations of the American mountaineers in the distant wilderness. Utterly despising their own countrymen, whom they are used to contrast with the dashing white hunters who swagger in all the pride of fringe and leather through their towns, they, as is but natural, gladly accept husbands from the latter class: preferring the stranger, who possesses the heart and strong right arm to defend them, to the miserable cowardly "pelâdos," who hold what little they have on sufferance of savage Indians, but one degree superior to themselves. Certainly no band of hunters that ever appeared in the Vale of Taos numbered in its ranks a properer lot of lads than those now camped on Greenhorn, intent on matrimonial foray into the settlements of New Mexico. There was young Dick Wooton, * who was "some" for his inches, being six feet six, and as straight and strong as the barrel of his long rifle. * Still living about 1898 in Colorado. (Ed.)