He Had Contrived To Reach Fort Leavenworth, Where He Had
Found The Paymaster And Received His Money.
As a boat was just ready
to start for St. Louis, he went on board and engaged his passage.
This done, he immediately got drunk on shore, and the boat went off
without him. It was some days before another opportunity occurred,
and meanwhile the sutler's stores furnished him with abundant means
of keeping up his spirits. Another steamboat came at last, the clerk
of which happened to be a friend of his, and by the advice of some
charitable person on shore he persuaded Tete Rouge to remain on
board, intending to detain him there until the boat should leave the
fort. At first Tete Rouge was well contented with this arrangement,
but on applying for a dram, the barkeeper, at the clerk's
instigation, refused to let him have it. Finding them both
inflexible in spite of his entreaties, he became desperate and made
his escape from the boat. The clerk found him after a long search in
one of the barracks; a circle of dragoons stood contemplating him as
he lay on the floor, maudlin drunk and crying dismally. With the
help of one of them the clerk pushed him on board, and our informant,
who came down in the same boat, declares that he remained in great
despondency during the whole passage. As we left St. Louis soon
after his arrival, we did not see the worthless, good-natured little
vagabond again.
On the evening before our departure Henry Chatillon came to our rooms
at the Planters' House to take leave of us. No one who met him in
the streets of St. Louis would have taken him for a hunter fresh from
the Rocky Mountains. He was very neatly and simply dressed in a suit
of dark cloth; for although, since his sixteenth year, he had
scarcely been for a month together among the abodes of men, he had a
native good taste and a sense of propriety which always led him to
pay great attention to his personal appearance. His tall athletic
figure, with its easy flexible motions, appeared to advantage in his
present dress; and his fine face, though roughened by a thousand
storms, was not at all out of keeping with it. We took leave of him
with much regret; and unless his changing features, as he shook us by
the hand, belied him, the feeling on his part was no less than on
ours. Shaw had given him a horse at Westport. My rifle, which he
had always been fond of using, as it was an excellent piece, much
better than his own, is now in his hands, and perhaps at this moment
its sharp voice is startling the echoes of the Rocky Mountains. On
the next morning we left town, and after a fortnight of railroads and
steamboat we saw once more the familiar features of home.
End of The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman, Jr.
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