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Six feet two he loomed in the shadows, a gaunt, raw-boned old mountaineer. On his head was a tall, wide-brimmed hat and in his right hand he carried a bulky carpet sack. The left sleeve of his long-tailed coat hung empty to the elbow.
Without any other incident worth the mention, Carson and his escort reached St. Louis. There the renowned mountaineer became the hero of the hour. He was taken at once to the home of Hon. Thomas H. Benton, the distinguished statesman and the father in law of Colonel Fremont, who introduced him to the leading Citizens.
Men who are too old for such fatigue, and men who, though young, are not sufficiently strong, usually come to grief. I close my lecture with a quotation from the writings of a celebrated mountaineer `In all cases the man rather than the mountain is at fault." "There is truth in what you say," observed Lewis, rising, with a yawn.
"Do you consider yourself one of the same sort of dicky bird as Plant and that crew?" demanded Bob. "There ain't no humans all alike," replied the mountaineer. Although Bob was thus rebuffed in immediately getting inside of the man's loyalty to his service and his superiors, he was from that moment made to feel at his ease. Later, in a fuller intimacy, he was treated more frankly.
"Run, Mr. Man! Run as if the Old Harry were after you, and don't forget to keep that rifle pointed away from the camp. If it goes off you're liable to get hurt. Get out!" The mountaineer, as Hippy released him, sprang away a few paces, then, suddenly whirling, fired point blank at Hippy.
At this many nods and glances were exchanged by the group in silent admiration of the "gov'ment," and one mountaineer, bold even to recklessness, remarked, "Jim must have a heap o' money t' be a buyin' four dollar watches. Must er sold that gray mule o' hisn; hit'd fetch 'bout that much, I reckon." "Much you know 'bout it, Buck Boswell. Let me tell you, Jim he works, he does.
John Hammond was too experienced a mountaineer to be deterred by a little snow. He went up Silver Howe, and from the rugged breast of the mountain saw the sun leap up from amidst a chaos of hill and crag, in all his majesty, while the grey mists of night slowly floated up from the valley that had lain hidden below them, and Grasmere Lake sparkled and flashed in the light of the newly-risen sun.
It was strange that Bill delayed his coming so long. As a rule he was always back before the coming of evening. An old and practiced mountaineer, he had never been known to lose sense of direction or sense of distance, and he was an hour overdue when the sun went down and the soft, beautiful mountain twilight began.
But he made no further attempt to persuade Barney, and began the descent alone. It was not so difficult a matter for a sure-footed mountaineer like Nick to make his way down to the ledge as one might imagine, for in a certain place the face of the cliff presented a series of jagged edges and projections which afforded him foothold.
Old Pegleg came cantering along with his rifle balanced on the sliding withers of his mare-mule, for he rode without a saddle. He was an oldish man and fat for a mountaineer. A ten-year-old nephew rode behind him, with his short arms encircling his uncle's paunch. The old man wore a dirty white shirt with a tabbed bosom; a single shiny white china button held the neckband together at the back.
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