Red Plume — page 73: what you’re looking at

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

7 A TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 73 I reckon, no white man or Injun hed ever been afore. One mornin’ Hutch left camp, and went up to look at the traps, and he come back missin’—that is, he never come back ag’in. Day in and day out, fur more’n a week, I hunted through every hill-and gully, every hole and corner in all that reach, but no sign could I see of Hutch. I’lowed, of course, that he’d been killed; but, what. had become of his body, ‘was too high a honeycomb fur this b’ar to climb to. So, I loaded up the skins and traps, and went back to the settle- ment, but I could never quit thinkin’ ’bext Hutch. “Next summer, 1 was layin’ off at Laramie, and was snoozin’ right sound one night, when I woke up, and saw Hutch standin’ by my blanket. It kinder started me, I ad-. mit, but he looked mighty nateral, and I spoke to him, | “< allo, Hutch ? says I, ‘ whar’ in creation did you come from ? “¢ No matter whar’ I come from,’ says he. ‘It’s lucky for you, old hoss, that im dead, or ’'d wallop you for not findin’ me and buryin’ me.’ “<JT did my best, Hutch, says I; ‘I hunted all over crea- tion, but couldn’t find a sign of ye.’ “Then, says he, ‘you must be one of the durndest fools outside the settlements, fur I was right under the Devil’s Table, and I’m thar’ yit, and I want to be buried.’ “We made me promise to find him and bury him, and was | off like a flash. “Next mornin’, as soon as I could git my outfit together, I was off for the Salmon. It was a long journey, but I got thar’ at last, and p’inted right fur the Devil’s Table, and then I wondered I hadn’t hunted thar’ afore. It was a flat rock, that we hed giv’ that name to, reachin’ out over a narrow cafion, some sixty feet deep. I hed mighty hard work to git down into it, but thar’ I was at last, and thar’ I found, jist as his ghost hed told me, Hutch’s bones and part of his clothes. I buried them, and hey’ wondered ever sence, how he could hey’ been sech a durned fool as to fall down into that cafion. Now, Cap’n Frank,’ continued the narrator, with an air of triumph, “ what do you think of that? P’raps ye don’t be- lieve me.” “TJ believe,” answered Steele, “that you were thinking comichookssconn