Chapter 35 - Page 2

was taken into favor; his jokes began to be

relished; his careless, free and easy air, to be considered

singularly amusing; and in the end, he was pronounced by the

travellers one of the merriest companions and most entertaining

vagabonds they had met with in the wilderness.

Supper being over, the redoubtable Shee-wee-she-ouaiter, for such

was the simple name by which he announced himself, declared his

intention of keeping company with the party for a day or two, if

they had no objection; and by way of backing his self-invitation,

presented the carcass of the buck as an earnest of his hunting

abilities. By this time, he had so completely effaced the

unfavorable impression made by his first appearance, that he was

made welcome to the camp, and the Nez Perce guide undertook to

give him lodging for the night. The next morning, at break of

day, he borrowed a gun, and was off among the hills, nor was

anything more seen of him until a few minutes after the party had

encamped for the evening, when he again made his appearance, in

his usual frank, careless manner, and threw down the carcass of

another noble deer, which he had borne on his back for a

considerable distance.

This evening he was the life of the party, and his open

communicative disposition, free from all disguise, soon put them

in possession of his history. He had been a kind of prodigal son

in his native village; living a loose, heedless life, and

disregarding the precepts and imperative commands of the chiefs.

He had, in consequence, been expelled from the village, but, in

nowise disheartened at this banishment, had betaken himself to

the society of the border Indians, and had led a careless,

haphazard, vagabond life, perfectly consonant to his humors;

heedless of the future, so long as he had wherewithal for the

present; and fearing no lack of food, so long as he had the

implements of the chase, and a fair hunting ground.

Finding him very expert as a hunter, and being pleased with his

eccentricities, and his strange and merry humor, Captain

Bonneville fitted him out handsomely as the Nimrod of the party,

who all soon became quite attached to him. One of the earliest

and most signal services he performed, was to exorcise the

insatiate kill-crop that hitherto oppressed the party. In fact,

the doltish Nez Perce, who had seemed so perfectly insensible to

rough treatment of every kind, by which the travellers had

endeavored to elbow him out of their society, could not withstand

the good-humored bantering, and occasionally sharp wit of