things and the dogs and the slimy snakes on top of me, a-mashing and tearing me.  I bit pieces out of them, and bit again, and scratched and gouged.  When I was ’most give out, I heard the Pawnee scalp-yell, and use my rifle for a poking stick, if in didn’t charge a party of the best boys in the mountains.  They slayed the devils right and left, and set them running like goats, but this hoss was so weak fighting he fainted away.  When I come to, I was on the Purgatoire, just where I found the liquor, and some trappers was slapping their ‘whats’ in my face to bring me to.  All around where I was laying, the grass was pulled up, and the ground dug with my knife, and the bottle, cached when I traded with the Utes, was smashed to flinders against a tree.

“’Why, what on earth, Hatcher, have you been doing here?  You was kicking and tearing around, and yelling as if your scalp was taken.  We don’t understand these hifalootin notions.’

“‘The devils of hell was after me,’ said I, mighty gruff.  ’This hoss has seen more of them than he ever wants to see again.’

“They tried to get me out of the notion, but I swear, and I’ll stick to it, I saw a heap more of the all-fired place than I want to again.  If it ain’t a fact, I don’t know fat cow from poor bull.”

Hatcher always ended his yarn with this declaration, and you could never make him believe that he had had only a touch of delirium tremens.

This story is related by Colonel W. F. Cody:—­

In 1864 two military expeditions were sent into the northwest country to disperse any hostile gatherings of Indians, one expedition starting from Fort Lincoln on the Missouri River under command of General George A. Custer.  It was on this expedition that Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills, a discovery which finally led up to the great Sioux war of 1876, when he lost his life in the battle of the Little Big Horn.  The other expedition started from Rawlins on the Union Pacific Railway to go north into the Big Horn Basin in the Big Horn Mountain country.  This expedition was commanded by Colonel Anson Mills.  I was chief scout and guide of the expedition.

One day, when we were on the Great Divide of the Big Horn Mountains, the command had stopped to let the pack-train close up.  While we were resting there, quite a number of officers and myself were talking to Colonel Mills, when we noticed, coming from the direction in which we were going, a solitary horseman about three miles distant.  He was coming from the ridge of the mountains.  The colonel asked me if I had any scouts out in that direction, and I told him I had not.  We naturally supposed that it was an Indian.  He kept drawing nearer and nearer to us, until we made out it was a white man, and as he came on I recognized him to be California Joe.[72]

When he got within hailing distance, I sung out, “Hello, Joe,” and