Page:The Oregon Trail by Parkman.djvu/336

310 abortive attempts to pronounce it, one day coolly christened him Tête Rouge, in honor of his red curls. He had at different times been clerk of a Mississippi steamboat, and agent in a trading establishment at Nauvoo, besides filling various other capacities, in all of which he had seen much more of "life" than was good for him. In the spring, thinking that a summer's campaign would be an agreeable recreation, he had joined a company of St. Louis volunteers.

"There were three of us," said Tête Rouge, "me and Bill Stevens and John Hopkins. We thought we would just go out with the army, and when we had conquered the country, we would get discharged and take our pay, you know, and go down to Mexico. They say there's plenty of fun going on there. Then we could go back to New Orleans by way of Vera Cruz."

But Tête Rouge, like many a stouter volunteer, had reckoned without his host. Fighting Mexicans was a less amusing occupation than he had supposed, and his pleasure trip was disagreeably interrupted by brain fever, which attacked him when about half way to Bent's Fort. He jolted along through the rest of the journey in a baggage wagon. When they came to the fort he was taken out and left there, with the rest of the sick. Bent's Fort does not supply the best accommodations for an invalid. Tête Rouge's sick-chamber was a little mud room, where he and a companion attacked by the same disease were laid together, with nothing but a buffalo-robe between them and the ground. The assistant surgeon's deputy visited them once a day and brought them each a huge dose of calomel, the only medicine, according to his surviving victim, which he was acquainted with.

Tête Rouge woke one morning, and turning to his companion