The old man had been one of the garrison in Fort Union when the
terrible Alexander Harvey had killed Isidore, the Mexican, and standing
in the courtyard cried to the assembled men: "I, Alexander Harvey, have
killed the Spaniard. If there are any of his friends who want to take
it up let them come on"; and not a man in the fort dared to go. He had
been with Jim Bridger, when, on a wager, he went down Bear River in a
skin boat and came out on the waters of the Great Salt Lake.
Susan, who had stopped her talk with the voyageur to listen to this
minstrel of the plains, now said:
"Aren't you lonely in those quiet places where there's no one else?"
The old man nodded, a gravely assenting eye on hers:
"Powerful lonely, sometimes. There ain't a mountain man that ain't
felt it, some of 'em often, others of 'em once and so scairt that time
they won't take the risk again. It comes down suddint, like a
darkness--then everything round that was so good and fine, the sound of
the pines and the bubble of the spring and the wind blowing over the
grass, seems like they'd set you crazy. You'd give a year's peltries
for the sound of a man's voice.
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