heem, an' breeng me hees ears.' Bueno! I go, señor. I go pronto. Buena dia!"

"Then git," growled Schoolcraft. "Thar's that long-faced clerk o' Hawkens' openin' th' shop. Now remember: this side o' th' junction o' th' Oregon trail I'm only ter watch him. If he goes southwest from th' junction, yer job begins; if he heads up fer th' Platte, my job starts. I ain't got no love fer him, but I'm hopin' he heads fer Oregon an' gets killed quick! I hate ter think o' a white man in Armijo's paws. An' if he hangs 'round th' settlements, we toss up fer th' job. If that's right, vamoose."

"Eet ees r-right to thee vera letter," whispered the Mexican, rubbing his hands. "Eef only I can get heem to Santa Fe—ah, my fren'!"

"Yer wuss nor a weasel," grunted the Missourian, slight prickles playing up and down his spine. "Better git down to them freight piles!"

Schoolcraft watched his scurrying friend until he slipped around a corner and was lost to sight; then he turned and looked up the street at the gun shop of Jake and Samuel Hawken, whose weapons were renowned all over that far-stretching western wilderness. Shrugging his shoulders, he glanced in disgust at the heavy, patented repeating rifle in his hand and, letting his personal affairs[Pg 4] take precedence over those of the distant Mexican tyrant, he swung down the street, crossed it, and entered the famous gun shop. He risked nothing by the move, for the store was the Mecca of frontiersmen, and a trip to St. Louis was hardly complete without a visit to the shop.

[Pg 4]

The Hawkens were established, so much so that they were to be singled out by one of the famous Colt family with a partnership proposition. The fame of their rifles had rolled westward to the Rockies and beyond. They were to be found across the Canadian and Mexican boundaries and wherever hunters and trappers congregated, who scorned the Northwest fusil as fit only for trading purposes, laughed in their sleeves at the preposterous length and general inefficiency of the Hudson Bay muskets, and contentedly patted the stocks of their Hawkens'. There is a tradition that the length of the Hudson Bay muskets, which often rose over the head of a tall man while the butt rested on the ground, was due to the fact that the ignorant Indians could obtain a white man's gun only by stacking up beaver skins until the pile was as high as the musket. Even worse than the flintlock trade guns were the escopetas of the south, matchlocks of prodigious bore and no accuracy or power, which 

 Prev. P 3/227 next