And why should the old _voyageur_ have thus reserved
his experiences from those who were near and dear to him? Simply
because most of his adventures with Walker were not of the strictly
mild character becoming a family-man. But it was all the same to these
good people; and when I laughed, they all took up the idea and laughed
their best,--the little hunch-backed girl generally going off into a
kind of epilepsy by herself, over in the darkest corner of the room,
among the tubs.
When divested of the strange Western expletives and imprecations with
which the old man used to spice his reminiscences, some of them are
enough. I remember one, telling how Peter Walker "raised the wind" on
a particular occasion, when he got short of money on his way to some
distant trading-post, in a district strange to him. It is before me,
in short-hand, on the pages of an old, old pocket-book, and I will
tell it with some slight improvements on the narrator's style, such as
suppressing his unnecessary combinations of the curse.
Mounted on a two-hundred-dollar buffalo-horse, for which he would not
have taken double that amount, Peter Walker found himself, one
afternoon, near the end of a long day's ride. He had but little
baggage with him, that little consisting entirely of a bowie-knife and
holster-pistols,--for the revolver was a scarce piece of furniture
then and there. Of money he was entirely destitute, having expended
his last dollar upon the purchase of his noble steed, and of the
festive suit of clothes with which he calculated upon astonishing
people who resided outside the limits of civilization.
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