Bent's
Fort, jest to tickle the greenhorns. 'Tain't much of a shot nayther;
but it tries the narves a little I reckon. Hoy! Rube!"

"What doo 'ee want?"

This was spoken in an energetic and angry-like voice, that turned all
eyes to the quarter whence it proceeded. At the first glance, there
seemed to be no one in that direction. In looking more carefully among
the logs and stumps, an individual was discovered seated by one of the
fires. It would have been difficult to tell that it was a human body,
had not the arms at the moment been in motion. The back was turned
toward the crowd, and the head had disappeared, sunk forward over the
fire. The object, from where we were standing, looked more like the
stump of a cotton-wood, dressed in dirt-coloured buckskin, than the body
of a human being. On getting nearer, and round to the front of it, it
was seen to be a man, though a very curious one, holding a long rib of
deer-meat in both hands, which he was polishing with a very poor set of
teeth.

The whole appearance of this individual was odd and striking. His
dress, if dress it could be called, was simple as it was savage. It
consisted of what might have once been a hunting-shirt, but which now
looked more like a leathern bag with the bottom ripped open, and the
sleeves sewed into the sides. It was of a dirty-brown colour, wrinkled
at the hollow of the arms, patched round the armpits, and greasy all
over; it was fairly caked with dirt! There was no attempt at either
ornament or fringe. There had been a cape, but this had evidently been
drawn upon from time to time, for patches and other uses, until scarcely
a vestige of it remained. The leggings and moccasins were on a par with
the shirt, and seemed to have been manufactured out of the same hide.
They, too, were dirt-brown, patched, wrinkled, and greasy. They did not
meet each other, but left a piece of the ankle bare, and that also was
dirt-brown, like the buck-skin. There was no undershirt, waistcoat, or
other garment to be seen, with the exception of a close-fitting cap,
which had once been cat-skin, but the hair was all worn off it, leaving
a greasy, leathery-looking surface, that corresponded well with the
other parts of the dress. Cap, shirt, leggings, and moccasins looked as
if they had never been stripped off since the day they were first tried
on, and that might have been many a year ago. The shirt was open,
displaying the naked breast and throa