Читать книгу Vigilante Days and Ways. The pioneers of the Rockies; the makers and making of Montana and Idaho онлайн

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“He remained at this lodge about two weeks, paying the Indian ten dollars a meal. His food consisted of ants and an unpalatable herb, called in the mountains the ‘tobacco plant.’

“The above facts Helm gave me with tears in his eyes, and said, ‘I will give you all I have in the world,—which is only nine dollars,—to take me to the settlements.’ I told him I did not desire money for helping a man in his condition.

“That same evening the Indian with whom Helm had been stopping, visited me. His name was Mo-quip. I had known him for several years. He fully corroborated Helm’s story, in regard to the carrying and eating the body of his companion. ‘When I first tasted of the flesh,’ said Mo-quip in his own tongue, ‘I knew not what it was, but told the stranger it was bueno^[1] game,—better than I had myself. The stranger then took hold of one of the corners of a red shirt that was around his pack, and jerked it up, when a white man’s leg, the lower end ragged from gnawing, rolled out on the ground.’ Altogether Helm had paid Mo-quip two hundred and eighty dollars.