The Indian women who follow the fortunes of the white hunters are remarkable for their affection and fidelity to their husbands, the which, virtues, it must be remarked, are all on their own side; for, with very few exceptions, the mountaineers seldom scruple to abandon their Indian wives whenever the fancy takes them to change their harems; and on such occasions the squaws, thus cast aside, wild with jealousy and despair, have been not unfrequently known to take signal vengeance both on their faithless husbands and on the successful beauties who have supplanted them in their affections. There are some honorable exceptions, however, to such cruelty, and many of the mountaineers stick to their red-skinned wives for better and for worse, often suffering them to gain the upper hand in the domestic economy of the lodges, and being ruled by their better halves in all things pertaining to family affairs; and it may be remarked that, when once the lady dons the unmentionables, she becomes the veriest termagant that ever henpecked an unfortunate husband. Your refined trappers, however, who, after many years of bachelor life, incline to take to themselves a better half, often undertake an expedition into the settlements of New Mexico, where not unfrequently they adopt a Young Lochinvar system in procuring the required rib, and have been known to carry off _vi et armis_, from the midst of a fandango in Fernandez or El Rancho of Taos, some dark-skinned beauty--with or without her own consent is a matter of unconcern--and bear the ravished fair one across the mountains, where she soon becomes inured to the free and roving life fate has assigned her. American women are valued at a low figure in the mountains. They are too fine and "fofarraw." Neither can they make moccasins, or dress skins; nor are they so schooled to perfect obedience to their lords and masters as to stand a "lodge-poling," which the western lords of the creation not unfrequently deem it their bounden duty to inflict upon their squaws for some dereliction of domestic duty. To return, however, to La Bonté. That worthy thought himself a lucky man to have lost but one of his wives, and she the worst of the two. "Here's the beauty," he philosophized, "of having two wiping-sticks to your rifle; if one breaks whilst ramming down a ball, there's still hickory left to supply its place." Although, with animals and peltry, he had lost several hundred dollars' worth of "possibles," he never groaned or grumbled. "There's redskin will pay for this," he once muttered, and was done.