TETE ROUGE, THE VOLUNTEER
The next morning, having directed Delorier to repair with his cart to the place of meeting, we came again to the fort to make some arrangements for the journey.After completing these we sat down under a sort of perch, to smoke with some Cheyenne Indians whom we found there.In a few minutes we saw an extraordinary little figure approach us in a military dress.He had a small, round countenance, garnished about the eyes with the kind of wrinkles commonly known as crow's feet and surrounded by an abundant crop of red curls, with a little cap resting on the top of them.Altogether, he had the look of a man more conversant with mint juleps and oyster suppers than with the hardships of prairie service.He came up to us and entreated that we would take him home to the settlements, saying that unless he went with us he should have to stay all winter at the fort.
We liked our petitioner's appearance so little that we excused ourselves from complying with his request.At this he begged us so hard to take pity on him, looked so disconsolate, and told so lamentable a story that at last we consented, though not without many misgivings.
The rugged Anglo-Saxon of our new recruit's real name proved utterly unmanageable on the lips of our French attendants, and Henry Chatillon, after various abortive attempts to pronounce it, one day coolly christened him Tete Rouge, in honor of his red curls.He had at different times been clerk of a Mississippi steamboat, and agent in a trading establishment at Nauvoo, besides filling various other capacities, in all of which he had seen much more of "life" than was good for him.In the spring, thinking that a summer's campaign would be an agreeable recreation, he had joined a company of St.Louis volunteers.
"There were three of us," said Tete Rouge, "me and Bill Stevens and John Hopkins.We thought we would just go out with the army, and when we had conquered the country, we would get discharged and take our pay, you know, and go down to Mexico.They say there is plenty of fun going on there.Then we could go back to New Orleans by way of Vera Cruz."But Tete Rouge, like many a stouter volunteer, had reckoned without his host.Fighting Mexicans was a less amusing occupation than he had supposed, and his pleasure trip was disagreeably interrupted by brain fever, which attacked him when about halfway to Bent's Fort.
He jolted along through the rest of the journey in a baggage wagon.
When they came to the fort he was taken out and left there, together with the rest of the sick.Bent's Fort does not supply the best accommodations for an invalid.Tete Rouge's sick chamber was a little mud room, where he and a companion attacked by the same disease were laid together, with nothing but a buffalo robe between them and the ground.The assistant surgeon's deputy visited them once a day and brought them each a huge dose of calomel, the only medicine, according to his surviving victim, which he was acquainted with.
Tete Rouge woke one morning, and turning to his companion, saw his eyes fixed upon the beams above with the glassy stare of a dead man.
