The annual gatherings of the trappers at the rendezvous were often the scene of bloody duels; for over their cups and cards no men were more quarrelsome than the old-time mountaineers. Rifles at twenty paces settled all difficulties, and, as may be imagined, the fall of one or the other of the combatants was certain, or, as sometimes happened, both fell at the word "Fire!" The trapper's visits to the Mexican settlements, or to the lodges of a tribe of Indians, for the purpose of trading, often resulted in his returning to his quiet camp with a woman to grace his solitary home, the loving and lonely couple as devoted to each other in the midst of blood-thirsty enemies, howling wolves, and panthers, as if they were in some quiet country village. The easy manners of the harum-scarum, reckless trappers at the rendezvous, and the simple, unsuspecting hearts of those nymphs of the mountains, the squaws, caused their husbands to be very jealous of the attentions bestowed upon them by strangers. Often serious difficulties arose, in the course of which the poor wife received a severe whipping with the knot of a lariat, or no very light lodge-poling at the hands of her imperious sovereign. Sometimes the affair ended in a more tragical way than a mere beating, not infrequently the gallant paying the penalty of his interference with his life. Garrard, a traveller on the great plains and in the Rocky Mountains half a century ago, from whose excellent diary I have frequently quoted, passed many days and nights at Bent's Fort fifty years ago, and his quaint description of life there in that remote period of the extreme frontier is very amusing. Its truth has often been confirmed by Uncle John Smith, who was my guide and interpreter in the Indian expedition of 1868-69, only two decades after Garrard's experience.