CHAPTER XII
THE WRECK ON THE RIVER
I made friends with many of these strange travelers, and was attracted
especially by one, a reticent man of perhaps sixty odd years, in Western
garb, full of beard and with long hair reaching to his shoulders. He had
the face of an old Teuton war chief I had once seen depicted in a canvas
showing a raid in some European forest in years long before a Christian
civilization was known--a face fierce and eager, aquiline in nose, blue
of eye; a figure stalwart, muscular, whose every movement spoke courage
and self-confidence. Auberry was his name, and as I talked with him he
told me of days passed with my heroes--Fremont, Carson, Ashley, Bill
Williams, Jim Bridger, even the negro ruffian Beckwourth--all men of the
border of whose deeds I had read. Auberry had trapped from the St.
Mary's to the sources of the Red, and his tales, told in simple and
matter-of-fact terms, set my very blood atingle. He was bound, as he
informed me, for Laramie; always provided that the Sioux, now grown
exceedingly restless over the many wagon-trains pushing up the Platte to
all the swiftly-opening West, had not by this time swooped down and
closed all the trails entirely.
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