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Show 472 WESTERN WILDS. reled with about an equal number of Americans at Fort Lancaster, about a trade of horses and furs. The Americans ambushed them and stampeded all their stock. The Mexicans took arms and advanced on their foes; then, the commandantes on each side being leaders and spokesmen, ensued the following: Mexican " Que quiere caballero!" ( What do you want, sir?) American " Yo tengo lo caballardo porque dicirme esta?" ( I have your horses why do you ask ?) " Caraho, Americano!" shouted the Mexican, bringing his gun to his shoulder; but the American was too quick with his pistol and laid the other prostrate, the ball passing through him just below the heart. The result was " the survival of the fittest/' and the " superior race" retired with their booty. An appeal to the trading company at the fort brought an international council, which resulted in an amicable settlement. The wounded man recovered in three months, and the place was thenceforth known as " Greaser's Gulch." Herring and Beer were mountaineers, companions and friends, who paid court to the same senorita. Herring married her, and Beer grossly insulted him, with intent to bring on a quarrel and kill him. A duel was agreed on, and Beer, who was a crack shot, confidently expected to kill Herring, who was considered a poor " off- hand marks-man." They met, attended by their friends, who arranged that the shooting was to be at any time the principals chose in the count be-tween the word fire and three. At the word fire, the ball of Beer's rifle buried in a cottonwood just over Herring's head; at the word three, Herring's ball pierced the heart of Beer, who was buried in the gulch where he fell. When I visited it long afterward the gulch was still known as " Beer's Folly." Sadder, more bloody and more romantic was the episode of Vaughn and La Bonte, life long companions and friends, but destined to ex-emplify the deadly bitterness of " love to hatred turned." Together they had traversed every trail on the plains and trapped on every stream in the mountains; at the old Arkansas crossing they had fought side by side against the murderous Kioways; they had taken beaver together on Clear Creek, and gnawed the same bone in the extremity of hunger when overtaken too early by the winter storms. Common ianger and suffering creates strange friendships. Perhaps it is not the intelligent social comity which unites men of some cultivation; per-haps it is more like an exaggeration of that kinship which makes even dumb animals cling to each other, and in a mysterious way mourn another's death. Be that as it may, a little cloud, no bigger than a |