y a squaw out of
smoked buckskin. Our muleteer, Delorier, brought up the rear with his
cart, waddling ankle-deep in the mud, alternately puffing at his pipe,
and ejaculating in his prairie patois: "Sacre enfant de garce!" as
one of the mules would seem to recoil before some abyss of unusual
profundity. The cart was of the kind that one may see by scores around
the market-place in Montreal, and had a white covering to protect the
articles within. These were our provisions and a tent, with ammunition,
blankets, and presents for the Indians.
We were in all four men with eight animals; for besides the spare horses
led by Shaw and myself, an additional mule was driven along with us as a
reserve in case of accident.
After this summing up of our forces, it may not be amiss to glance at
the characters of the two men who accompanied us.
Delorier was a Canadian, with all the characteristics of the true Jean
Baptiste. Neither fatigue, exposure, nor hard labor could ever impair
his cheerfulness and gayety, or his obsequious politeness to his
bourgeois; and when night came he would sit down by the fire, smoke his
pipe, and tell stories with the utmost contentment. In fact, the prairie
was his congenial element. Henry Chatillon was of a different stamp.
When we were at St. Louis, several gentlemen of the Fur Company had
kindly offered to procure for us a hunter and guide suited for our
purposes, and on coming one afternoon to the office, we found there a
tall and exceedingly well-dressed man with a face so open and frank that
it attracted our notice at once. We were surprised at being told that it
was he who wished to guide us to the mountains. He was born in a little
French town near St. Louis, and from the age of fifteen years had been
constantly in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains, employed for the
most part by the Company to supply their forts with buffalo meat. As a
hunter he had but one rival in the whole region, a man named Cimoneau,
with whom, to the honor of both of them, he was on terms of the closest
friendship. He had arrived at St. Louis the day before, from the
mountains, where he had remained for four years; and he now only asked
to go and spend a day with his mother before setting out on another
expedition. His age was about thirty; he was six feet high, and very
powerfully and gracefully molded. The prairies had been his school;
he could neither read nor write, but he had a natural refinement and
delicac
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