Rough Times in Rough Places
A Personal Narrative
Bill Williams was the most successful trapper in the mountains, and the best acquainted with the ways and habits of
the wild tribes among and near whom he spent his adventurous life. He first came to the West as a sort of
missionary to the Osages. But "Old Bill" laid aside his Christianity and took up his rifle and came to the
mountains.
Bill William's westward movement
He was full of oddities in appearance, manner,conversation,and actions. He generally went out alone into the
mountains,and would remain there trapping by himself for several months together, his lonely camps being often
pitched in the vicinity of hostile savages. But he was as well versed in stratagem as they, and though he bore the
marks of balls and arrows, he was a terror to them in single fight.
He was a dead shot with a rifle, though he always shot with a "double wabble"; he
never could hold his gun still, yet his ball went always to the spot on a single shot. Though a
most indefatigable walker, he never could walk on a straight line, but went staggering along, first on one side and
then the other. He was an expert horseman; scarce a horse or mule could unseat him. He rode leaning forward upon
the pommel, with his rifle before him, his stirrups ridiculously short, and his breeches rubbed up to his knees,
leaving his legs bare even in freezing cold weather. He wore a loose monkey-jacket or a buckskin hunting-shirt,and
for his head-covering a blanket-cap, the two top corners drawn up into two wolfish, satyr-like ears, giving him
somewhat the appearance of the representations we generally meet with of his Satanic Majesty, at the same time
rendering his tout ensemble exceedingly ludicrous. He was a perfect specimen of his kind, an embodiment of the
reckless and extravagant propensity of the mountaineers, and he pursued his lucrative but perilous vocation from an
innate love of its excitement and dangers. For twenty-one years he had lived in the mountains without returning to
civilized life until he was taken back under guard, a year or two previous, by Captain Cook, for the offense of
manoeuvering and acting the Indian in his buckskin suit on the plains, thereby deceiving the captain into the
belief that he was an Indian, and giving his men a fruitless chase of several miles over the prairies before they
could overtake him on his pony, much to his diversion and the officer's chagrin.
continued
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