"Wagh!" grunted Killbuck, blushing bronze at all these compliments. "Your sight ain't bad. Elks is elk; black-tailed deer ain't white-tails; and b'ar is b'ar to you, and nothin' else, a long mile off and more." "Wa-agh!" "Thar ain't a track as leaves its mark upon the plains or mountains but you can read off-hand; that I've see'd myself. But tell me, old hoss, can you make understand the sign as shows itself in a woman's breast?" Killbuck removed the pipe from his mouth, raised his head, and puffed a rolling cloud of smoke into the air,--knocked the ashes from the bowl, likewise made his _medicine_--and answered thus:--"From Red River, away up north among the Britishers, to Heely (Gila) in the Spanish country-- from old Mis sour a to the Sea of Californy, I've trapped and hunted. I knows the Injuns and thar sign, and they knows me, I'm thinkin'. Thirty winters has snowed on me in these hyar mountains, and a nigger or a Spaniard * would larn some in that time. This old tool" (tapping his rifle) "shoots center, _she_ does; and if thar's game afoot, this child knows bull from cow, and ought to could. That deer is deer, and goats is goats, is plain as paint to any but a greenhorn. Beaver's a cunning critter, but I've trapped a heap; and at killing meat when meat's a-running, I'll shine in the biggest kind of crowd. For twenty year I packed a squaw along. Not one, but a many. First I had a Blackfoot--the darndest slut as ever cried for fofarraw. I lodge-poled her on Colter's Creek, and made her quit. My buffler hoss, and as good as four packs of beaver, I gave for old Bull-tail's daughter. He was head chief of the Ricaree, and came nicely round me. Thar wrasn't enough scarlet cloth, nor beads, nor vermilion in Sublette's packs for her. Traps wouldn't buy her all the fofarraw she wanted; and in two years I'd sold her to Cross-Eagle for one of Jake Hawken's guns--this very one I hold in my hands. Then I tried the Sioux, the Shian, and a Digger from the other side, who made the best moccasin as ever I wore. She was the best of all, and was rubbed out by the Yutas in the Bayou Salade. Bad was the best; and after she was gone under I tried no more. * Always alluding to Mexicans, who are invariably called Spaniards by the Western Americans. "Afore I left the settlements I know'd a white gal, and she was some punkins. I have never see'd nothing as 'ould beat her. Red blood won't shine any ways you fix it; and though I'm h----for sign, a woman's breast is the hardest kind of rock to me, and leaves no trail that I can see of. I've hearn you talk of a gal in Memphis County; Mary Brand you called her oncest. The gal I said I know'd, her name I disremember, but she stands before me as plain as Chimley Rock on Platte, and thirty year and more harn't changed a feature in her face, to me.