with blood, dust, and mire, would arrive at one of the military posts on
the borders, and relate an awful and bloody tragedy, from which he alone
had escaped.

In 1831, Mr. Sublette and his company crossed the prairies with
twenty-five waggons. He and his company were old pioneers among the
Rocky Mountains, whom the thirst of gold had transformed into merchants.
They went without guides, and no one among them had ever performed the
trip. All that they knew was that they were going from such to such a
degree of longitude. They reached the Arkansas river, but from thence to
the Cimaron there is no road, except the numerous paths of the
buffaloes, which, intersecting the prairie, very often deceive the
travellers.

When the caravan entered this desert the earth was entirely dry, and the
pioneers mistaking their road, wandered during several days exposed to
all the horrors of a febrile thirst under a burning sun. Often they were
seduced by the deceitful appearance of a buffalo-path, and in this
perilous situation Captain Smith, one of the owners of the caravan,
resolved to follow one of these paths, which he considered would
indubitably lead him to some spring of water or to a marsh.

He was alone, but he had never known fear. He was the most determined
adventurer who had ever passed the Rocky Mountains, and if but half of
what is said of him is true, his dangerous travels and his hairbreadth
escapes would fill many volumes more interesting and romantic than the
best pages of the American novelist. Poor man! after having during so
many years escaped from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, he was
fated to fall under the tomahawk, and his bones to bleach upon the
desert sands.