La Bonté * was raised in the state of Mississippi, not far from Memphis, on the left bank of that huge and snag-filled river. His father was a Saint Louis Frenchman, his mother a native of Tennessee. When a boy, our trapper was "some," he said, with the rifle, and always had a hankering for the West; particularly when, on accompanying his father to Saint Louis every spring, he saw the different bands of traders and hunters start upon their annual expeditions to the mountains. Greatly did he envy the independent _insouciant_ trappers, as, in all the glory of beads and buckskin, they shouldered their rifles at Jake Hawk-en's door (the rifle-maker of Saint Louis), and bade adieu to the cares and trammels of civilized life. However, like a thoughtless beaver-kitten, he put his foot into a trap one fine day, set by Mary Brand, ** a neighbor's daughter, and esteemed "some punkins"--or, in other words, toasted as the beauty of the county--by the susceptible Mississippians. From that moment he was "gone beaver;" "he felt queer," he said, "all over, like a buffalo shot in the lights; he had no relish for mush and molasses; hominy and johnny cakes failed to excite his appetite. Deer and turkeys ran by him unscathed; he didn't know, he said, whether his rifle had hind-sights or not. He felt bad, that was a fact; but what ailed him he didn't know." * The name of this trapper is perpetuated in La Bonté Creek, which enters the Platte River 66 miles above the mouth of the Laramie, on the old Oregon trail. (Ed.) ** Mary Chase. See introduction to this volume. (Ed.) Mary Brand--Mary Brand--Mary Brand! the old Dutch clock ticked it. Mary Brand! his head throbbed it when he lay down to sleep. Mary Brand! his riflelock spoke it plainly when he cocked it, to raise a shaking sight at a deer. Mary Brand, Mary Brand! the whip-poor-will sang it instead of her own well-known note; the bull-frogs croaked it in the swamp, and mosquitoes droned it in his ear as he tossed about his bed at night, wakeful, and striving to think what ailed him. Who could that strapping young fellow who passed the door just now be going to see? Mary Brand: Mary Brand. And who can big Pete Herring be dressing that silver-fox skin so carefully for? For whom but Mary Brand? And who is it that jokes and laughs and dances with all the "boys" but him; and why? Who but Mary Brand: and because the lovesick booby carefully avoids her. "And Mary Brand herself--what is she like?" "She's some now; that _is_ a fact, and the biggest kind of punkin at that," would have been the answer from any man, woman, or child in the county, and truly spoken too; always understanding that the pumpkin is the fruit by which the _ne plus ultra_ of female perfection is expressed amongst the figuratively-speaking westerns.