Red Plume — page 72: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

72 RED PLUME. them in their undertaking, and they strove fo cheer him up, and to ridicule his vision. “Maybe so chief not so much dead,” said Black Beaver. “That’s.so,” chimed in the trapper. “ We know, fur sart’in, Red Plume, that. the Blackfeet say the old wretch is livin’ yet, and likely. to live. You didn’t quite kill him, you see, and thar’ comes a big medicine-man among the Blackfeet, who cured. him up, and made him: quite lively again.” This explanation afforded the renegade a little consolation, but it did not materially help the case, as he was still dis- posed to regard the yision in the same light as before, espe- cially, as it was plain to him that neither the Delaware nor the trapper argued the point very earnestly. “Kotselo has seen the spirit of Nip-muck-we, and he must die,” he said, as he sadly accompanied Bush and Beaver to the rendezvous at which they had left their horses and their friends. Steele'and Carver greeted Black Beayer, and eagerly in- quired what they had seen and heard. As the adventure of Red Plume was the most exciting news, that was first related, and it provoked a variety of comment. . The two young men — laughed at the idea of ghosts, and maintained that the rene- _ gade had been laboring under an optical delusion, or had really seen the Fat Bear alive and in the flesh. But the young Blackfoot was not to be convinced, the Delaware was sileut, and the trapper solemnly shook his head. “ Thar’s no use in tellin’ this hoss, Cap’n Frank,” said he, “that thar’s no ghosts. You are better larnt man than ole Bill Bush, both of ye, fur all the Varnin’ Tye got hes been picked up out yere in the wilderness; but what I’ve seen andrheerd, that Tye seen and heerd, and that .I ken swar to. Thar’ was an old pardner of mine, one Bill Hutchins, the same. as had the _ three-cornered fight with the b’ar, what you’ve heern me tell of. Hutch and I had trapped and hunted together in these parts, goin’ on ten year, and ef that don’t make friends of two folks, thar’s nothin’ will. We fought sometimes, of course, but I ken say fur Hutch that he never hit me once arter I’d hollered, and sich a friend as that is wuth hayin’. “Wal, Hutch and I war’ trappin’, one season, way up above the head fork of the Salmon, in the mountings, whar’, comicbooks.con