Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/177

Rh After supper that evening, Uncle Kit suggested that we visit the emigrant camp and see the ladies, which did not altogether meet with my approval, but rather than be called bashful, I went along with the crowd. I was now twenty-one years of age, and this was the first time I had got sight of a white woman since I was fifteen, this now being the year of 1853.

I had been out in the mountains a long time, and had not had my hair cut during that time, but took excellent care of it. I always kept it rolled up in a piece of buckskin, and when unrolled it would hang down to my waist.

There was a number of young ladies in the train, and they were not long in learning that I was the most bashful person in the crowd, and they commenced trying to interest me in conversation. At that time I only owned two horses, and would have given them both, as free as the water that runs in the brook, if I could only have been away from there at that moment. Seeing that I had long hair, each of them wanted a lock. By this time I had managed to muster courage enough to begin to talk to them.

I told them that if they would sing a song, they might have a lock of my hair.

A little, fat Missouri girl, spoke up and said: "Will you let any one that sings have a lock of your hair?"

I assured her that I would.

"And each of us that sing?" interrupted another young lady.

I said each one that would sing could have a lock, provided there was enough to go around.