Chapter 35

The uninvited guest Free and easy manners Salutary jokes A

prodigal son Exit of the glutton A sudden change in

fortune Danger of a visit to poor relations Plucking of a

prosperous man A vagabond toilet A substitute for the very fine

horse Hard travelling The uninvited guest and the patriarchal

colt A beggar on horseback A catastrophe Exit of the merry

vagabond

As CAPTAIN BONNEVILLE and his men were encamped one evening among

the hills near Snake River, seated before their fire, enjoying a

hearty supper, they were suddenly surprised by the visit of an

uninvited guest. He was a ragged, half-naked Indian hunter, armed

with bow and arrows, and had the carcass of a fine buck thrown

across his shoulder. Advancing with an alert step, and free and

easy air, he threw the buck on the ground, and, without waiting

for an invitation, seated himself at their mess, helped himself

without ceremony, and chatted to the right and left in the

liveliest and most unembarrassed manner. No adroit and veteran

dinner hunter of a metropolis could have acquitted himself more

knowingly. The travellers were at first completely taken by

surprise, and could not but admire the facility with which this

ragged cosmopolite made himself at home among them. While they

stared he went on, making the most of the good cheer upon which

he had so fortunately alighted; and was soon elbow deep in "pot

luck," and greased from the tip of his nose to the back of his

ears.

As the company recovered from their surprise, they began to feel

annoyed at this intrusion. Their uninvited guest, unlike the

generality of his tribe, was somewhat dirty as well as ragged and

they had no relish for such a messmate. Heaping up, therefore, an

abundant portion of the "provant" upon a piece of bark, which

served for a dish, they invited him to confine himself thereto,

instead of foraging in the general mess.

He complied with the most accommodating spirit imaginable; and

went on eating and chatting, and laughing and smearing himself,

until his whole countenance shone with grease and good-humor. In

the course of his repast, his attention was caught by the figure

of the gastronome, who, as usual, was gorging himself in dogged

silence. A droll cut of the eye showed either that he knew him of

old, or perceived at once his characteristics. He immediately

made him the butt of his pleasantries; and cracked off two or

three good hits, that caused the sluggish dolt to prick up his

ears, and delighted all the company. From this time, the

uninvited guest 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

She-wee-she. He evidently quailed under his jokes, and sat

blinking like an owl in daylight, when pestered by the flouts and

peckings of mischievous birds. At length his place was found

vacant at meal-time; no one knew when he went off, or whither he

had gone, but he was seen no more, and the vast surplus that

remained when the repast was over, showed what a mighty

gormandizer had departed.

Relieved from this incubus, the little party now went on

cheerily. She-wee-she kept them in fun as well as food. His

hunting was always successful; he was ever ready to render any

assistance in the camp or on the march; while his jokes, his

antics, and the very cut of his countenance, so full of whim and

comicality, kept every one in good-humor.

In this way they journeyed on until they arrived on the banks of

the Immahah, and encamped near to the Nez Perce lodges. Here

She-wee-she took a sudden notion to visit his people, and show

off the state of worldly prosperity to which he had so suddenly

attained. He accordingly departed in the morning, arrayed in

hunter's style, and well appointed with everything benefitting

his vocation. The buoyancy of his gait, the elasticity of his

step, and the hilarity of his countenance, showed that he

anticipated, with chuckling satisfaction, the surprise he was

about to give those who had ejected him from their society in

rags. But what a change was there in his whole appearance when he

rejoined the party in the evening! He came skulking into camp

like a beaten cur, with his tail between his legs. All his finery

was gone; he was naked as when he was born, with the exception of

a scanty flap that answered the purpose of a fig leaf. His

fellow-travellers at first did not know him, but supposed it to

be some vagrant Root Digger sneaking into the camp; but when they

recognized in this forlorn object their prime wag, She-wee-she,

whom they had seen depart in the morning in such high glee and

high feather, they could not contain their merriment, but hailed

him with loud and repeated peals of laughter.

She-wee-she was not of a spirit to be easily cast down; he soon

joined in the merriment as heartily as any one, and seemed to

consider his reverse of fortune an excellent joke. Captain

Bonneville, however, thought proper to check his good-humor, and

demanded, with some degree of sternness, the cause of his altered

condition. He replied in the most natural and self-complacent

style imaginable, "that he had been among his cousins, who were

very poor; they had been delighted to see him; still more

delighted with his good fortune; they had taken him to their

arms; admired his equipments; one had begged for this; another

for that"--in fine, what with the poor devil's inherent

heedlessness, and the real generosity of his disposition, his

needy cousins had succeeded in stripping him of all his clothes

and accoutrements, excepting the fig leaf with which he had

returned to camp.

Seeing his total want of care and forethought, Captain Bonneville

determined to let him suffer a little, in hopes it might prove a

salutary lesson; and, at any rate, to make him no more presents

while in the neighborhood of his needy cousins. He was left,

therefore, to shift for himself in his naked condition; which,

however, did not seem to give him any concern, or to abate one

jot of his good-humor. In the course of his lounging about the

camp, however, he got possession of a deer skin; whereupon,

cutting a slit in the middle, he thrust his head through it, so

that the two ends hung down before and behind, something like a

South American poncho, or the tabard of a herald. These ends he

tied together, under the armpits; and thus arrayed, presented

himself once more before the captain, with an air of perfect

self-satisfaction, as though he thought it impossible for any

fault to be found with his toilet.

A little further journeying brought the travellers to the petty

village of Nez Perces, governed by the worthy and affectionate

old patriarch who had made Captain Bonneville the costly present

of the very fine horse. The old man welcomed them once more to

his village with his usual cordiality, and his respectable squaw

and hopeful son, cherishing grateful recollections of the hatchet

and ear-bobs, joined in a chorus of friendly gratulation.

As the much-vaunted steed, once the joy and pride of this

interesting family, was now nearly knocked up by travelling, and

totally inadequate to the mountain scramble that lay ahead,

Captain Bonneville restored him to the venerable patriarch, with

renewed acknowledgments for the invaluable gift. Somewhat to his

surprise, he was immediately supplied with a fine two years' old

colt in his stead, a substitution which he afterward learnt,

according to Indian custom in such cases, he might have claimed

as a matter of right. We do not find that any after claims were

made on account of this colt. This donation may be regarded,

therefore, as a signal punctilio of Indian honor; but it will be

found that the animal soon proved an unlucky acquisition to the

party.

While at this village, the Nez Perce guide had held consultations

with some of the inhabitants as to the mountain tract the party

were about to traverse. He now began to wear an anxious aspect,

and to indulge in gloomy forebodings. The snow, he had been told,

lay to a great depth in the passes of the mountains, and

difficulties would increase as he proceeded. He begged Captain

Bonneville, therefore, to travel very slowly, so as to keep the

horses in strength and spirit for the hard times they would have

to encounter. The captain surrendered the regulation of the march

entirely to his discretion, and pushed on in the advance, amusing

himself with hunting, so as generally to kill a deer or two in

the course of the day, and arriving, before the rest of the

party, at the spot designated by the guide for the evening's

encampment.

In the meantime, the others plodded on at the heels of the guide,

accompanied by that merry vagabond, She-wee-she. The primitive

garb worn by this droll left all his nether man exposed to the

biting blasts of the mountains. Still his wit was never frozen,

nor his sunshiny temper beclouded; and his innumerable antics and

practical jokes, while they quickened the circulation of his own

blood, kept his companions in high good-humor.

So passed the first day after the departure from the patriarch's.

The second day commenced in the same manner; the captain in the

advance, the rest of the party following on slowly. She-wee-she,

for the greater part of the time, trudged on foot over the snow,

keeping himself warm by hard exercise, and all kinds of crazy

capers. In the height of his foolery, the patriarchal colt,

which, unbroken to the saddle, was suffered to follow on at

large, happened to come within his reach. In a moment, he was on

his back, snapping his fingers, and yelping with delight. The

colt, unused to such a burden, and half wild by nature, fell to

prancing and rearing and snorting and plunging and kicking; and,

at length, set off full speed over the most dangerous ground. As

the route led generally along the steep and craggy sides of the

hills, both horse and horseman were constantly in danger, and

more than once had a hairbreadth escape from deadly peril.

Nothing, however, could daunt this madcap savage. He stuck to the

colt like a plaister [sic], up ridges, down gullies; whooping and

yelling with the wildest glee. Never did beggar on horseback

display more headlong horsemanship. His companions followed him

with their eyes, sometimes laughing, sometimes holding in their

breath at his vagaries, until they saw the colt make a sudden

plunge or start, and pitch his unlucky rider headlong over a

precipice. There was a general cry of horror, and all hastened to

the spot. They found the poor fellow lying among the rocks below,

sadly bruised and mangled. It was almost a miracle that he had

escaped with life. Even in this condition, his merry spirit was

not entirely quelled, and he summoned up a feeble laugh at the

alarm and anxiety of those who came to his relief. He was

extricated from his rocky bed, and a messenger dispatched to

inform Captain Bonneville of the accident. The latter returned

with all speed, and encamped the party at the first convenient

spot. Here the wounded man was stretched upon buffalo skins, and

the captain, who officiated on all occasions as doctor and

surgeon to the party, proceeded to examine his wounds. The

principal one was a long and deep gash in the thigh, which

reached to the bone. Calling for a needle and thread, the captain

now prepared to sew up the wound, admonishing the patient to

submit to the operation with becoming fortitude. His gayety was

at an end; he could no longer summon up even a forced smile; and,

at the first puncture of the needle, flinched so piteously, that

the captain was obliged to pause, and to order him a powerful

dose of alcohol. This somewhat rallied up his spirit and warmed

his heart; all the time of the operation, however, he kept his

eyes riveted on the wound, with his teeth set, and a whimsical

wincing of the countenance, that occasionally gave his nose

something of its usual comic curl.

When the wound was fairly closed, the captain washed it with rum,

and administered a second dose of the same to the patient, who

was tucked in for the night, and advised to compose himself to

sleep. He was restless and uneasy, however; repeatedly expressing

his fears that his leg would be so much swollen the next day, as

to prevent his proceeding with the party; nor could he be

quieted, until the captain gave a decided opinion favorable to

his wishes.

Early the next morning, a gleam of his merry humor returned, on

finding that his wounded limb retained its natural proportions.

On attempting to use it, however, he found himself unable to

stand. He made several efforts to coax himself into a belief that

he might still continue forward; but at length, shook his head

despondingly, and said, that "as he had but one leg," it was all

in vain to attempt a passage of the mountain.

Every one grieved to part with so boon a companion, and under

such disastrous circumstances. He was once more clothed and

equipped, each one making him some parting present. He was then

helped on a horse, which Captain Bonneville presented to him; and

after many parting expressions of good will on both sides, set

off on his return to his old haunts; doubtless, to be once more

plucked by his affectionate but needy cousins.