single gleam of his previous biography. When he was questioned on the
subject, he laid his finger on his lip; and if pressed more urgently,
his brow writhed, and his dark eye seemed to shoot sparks of livid fire!
He could write with astonishing correctness and facility, considering
his situation; and, although denied the exquisite pleasure and priceless
advantages of the sense of hearing, nature had given him ample
compensation, by an eye, quick and far-seeing as an eagle's; and a
smell, keen and incredible as that of a raven. He could discover objects
moving miles away in the far-off prairie, when others could perceive
nothing but earth and sky; and the rangers used to declare that he could
catch the scent of a Mexican or Indian at as great a distance as a
buzzard could distinguish the odor of a dead carcass.

It was these qualities which fitted him so well for a spy, in which
capacity he rendered invaluable services to Houston's army during the
war of independence. He always went alone, and generally obtained the
information desired. His habits in private life were equally singular.
He could never be persuaded to sleep under the roof of a house, or even
to use a tent-cloth. Wrapped in his blanket, he loved to lie out in the
open air, under the blue canopy of pure ether, and count the stars, or
gaze, with a yearning look, at the melancholy moon. When not employed as
a spy or guide, he subsisted by hunting, being often absent on solitary
excursions for weeks and even months together, in the wilderness. He was
a genuine son of nature, a grown up child of the woods and prairie,
which he worshiped with a sort of Pagan adoration. Excluded by his
infirmities from cordial fellowship with his kind, he made the inanimate
things of the earth his friends, and entered, by the heart's own
adoption, into brotherhood with the luminaries of heaven! Wherever there
was land or water, barren rocks or tangled brakes of wild, waving cane,
there was Deaf Smith's home, and there he was happy; but in the streets