The Trapper King

Adventure for all ages.

"I wonder what has become of that everlasting Yankee? He promised to

meet me here at noon, yet I have stood here and seen the shadows of

these old pines lengthen for the last hour. Surely something must have

happened to detain him, for he never deceived me yet, and I do not like

to believe he will commence now--"


"Yew are 'tarnal right; he won't!" interrupted the second speaker, who

was no other than the "everlasting Yankee" himself.


Thus soliloquized the celebrated scout, Lew Kelly, and thus replied

his tried friend and companion, Jehiel Filkins, as they stood upon a

peak of the Black Hills, west a five-day's ride from Fort Randall--the

nearest place where white men could be found, for they were already in

the hunting-grounds of the Blackfeet.


The two scouts, well-mounted, and armed to the teeth, were spending

a sort of vacation in that dreaded vicinity to satisfy themselves as

to the truth of certain rumors, rife at Fort Randall and Yankton,

concerning the gold, which it was asserted was laying around loose

in the ravines and damp, dark gulches of the Black Hills; and of the

existence, in the hills and valleys of the North-west, of bear, elk,

antelope and beaver, which an adventurous scout had asserted made that

country a perfect paradise for the hunter and trapper.


They had gone far enough, and seen enough to convince them that there

was good foundation for these rumors. Gold they had found in the black

sand washed down from the hills, and in the quartz ledges underlying or

jutting out from the very crag upon which they stood. As to game