Page:The life and adventures of James P. Beckwourth, mountaineer, scout, pioneer, and chief of the Crow nation of Indians (IA lifeadventuresof00beckrich).pdf/15

Rh white boy, a Mexican. He was the handsomest boy I ever saw in my life. And I said—

You have no business to take and keep white captives, American or Mexican; and that boy must go with me."

"And he made great demur, but finally consented. So he called off his Indians, and we went peacefully over the Plains."

"And the Mexican boy?"

"I wished I had left him among the Indians. He turned out to be the most infernal young scoundrel on the face of the earth."

The reader may be perfectly assured of the truth of every word of these reminiscences, and it is evident that they correspond altogether to the manner and style of adventure narrated by Beckwourth himself. Daily life on the Plains consisted in those days of constant raiding and being raided, robbing and "running," or in horse-stealing, with not a little fighting. On the very first hour on which I myself arrived at the most advanced surveyor’s station on the Kansas-Pacific Railway in 1866, an employé came in, reporting that he had just escaped with his life from a party of Apaches in war-paint, four miles distant. And before another half-hour passed, there came in a Lieutenant Hesselberger, who brought in a poor woman and her two daughters, whom he had recently ransomed from Indians at the risk of his life. They had seen husband and father murdered before their eyes at their home in Texas, their house being burned; after which they had been subjected for six months to such infamous and horrible brutalities that it was a marvel that they survived the treatment. It is worth mentioning that Henry Stanley, who has since become known as the great African explorer, was on the spot, and wrote an account of the captivity of these poor creatures for the New York Herald. Such were for a long time the daily events of my life. At one time it was a buffalo hunt, another an adventure of