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The latter, however, had the white-man's soles; though Guert took a pair or two with him that were of the pure Indian manufacture. Each of us had a coatee, made of common cloth; but we all carried hunting-shirts, to be worn as soon as we entered the woods.
They wore hunting-shirts, trowsers, and moccasins of deer-skin, the former being ornamented at the seams with a fringe of the same, while a colored belt around the waist, in which was stuck a large hunting-knife, gave each the appearance of a brigand. Mr.
Our faces were undeniably dirty, our blue hunting-shirts and buckskin trousers bore the marks of two months' rough travel, in numerous rips, tears, and tatters, which were only partially masked by a thick covering of reindeer hair from our fur kukhlánkas.
There were a few regulars, in uniform; there were some Mississippi troopers, and Coffee's Kentucky and Tennessee hunters, in hunting-shirts and jeans trousers; there were volunteers of all sorts from the streets of New Orleans merchants, lawyers, laborers, clerks, and clergymen armed with shot-guns, rifles, and old muskets; there were some criminals whom Jackson had released from prison on condition that they would fight; there was a battalion of free negroes, who were good soldiers; and, finally, there were about twenty Choctaw Indians.
Basil and Norman seemed to have thought of it at the same time, for both at once unbuckled their straps, and commenced pulling off their buckskin hunting-shirts. The others said nothing, as they knew well what they were going to do with them they knew they intended cutting them into strips, and then twisting a rope out of them. All four set to work together.
They were in the midst of a wilderness, without either horse or boat to carry them out of it. They had lost everything but their arms and their axe. The hunting-shirts of some of them, as we have seen, were destroyed, and they would now suffer from the severe cold that even in summer, as we have said, often reigns in these latitudes.
"Let the reader," says a historian, in speaking of the manners and dress of those noble pioneers, "imagine an assemblage of people, without a store, tailor, or mantuamaker within an hundred miles; and an assemblage of horses, without a blacksmith or saddler within an equal distance. The gentlemen dressed in shoepacks, moccasins, leather breeches, leggins, linsey hunting-shirts, and all home-made.
Covered with dust and cinders, hardly a vestige of uniform among them, in the shabbiest of old felt hats, in hunting-shirts of flannel or buckskin, in scout-worn trousers and Indian leggings, but with their prairie-belts crammed with copper cartridges, their brawny brown hands grasping the browner carbine, their keen eyes peering straight into the faces of the thronging crowd, their bronze features set and stern, the whole car fairly bristles with men who have fought tribe after tribe of savage foes from the Yellowstone to the Sonora line, and who hold a savage mob in utter contempt.
The skins of the caribou had also been scraped and dressed by Lucien who understood the process well and these, with the skin of the antelope, were sufficient to make a pair of hunting-shirts for Basil and Norman, who, it will be remembered, had lost theirs by cutting them up.
I knew the kitten would, and therein I found hope for Patsy Dale. I had been greatly shocked when told the girl was being taken over the mountains. Now by some peculiar mental twist I was beginning to enjoy secretly the prospect of seeing her again and in surroundings which harmonized with long rifles and hunting-shirts.
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