The Arkansaw traveler., 1889-11-02
h t1G Front Of a StaW pede.
BN FRANK W. CALKINS.

Jean Darbaye, who is now & Montana ranchman, is a modest man, and seldom recounts any adven- lures in which he bore prominent part; but he was lately persuaded to tell the story of one of his experiences, which deserves wider currency than it has yet had.
 Jean was the son of French Canadian parents, but was born at frontier post in northern Minne- sota At seven years of age he was sent to St. Louis to school, and for eight years attended the Academy of St. Philippe, but returned every spring by boat to spend the summer with his father at the post.
 His time while at home was occupied in athletic sports and, AS he grew older in hunting. His comrades were Indian boys, young Sioux, who taught him to shoot with bow and arrow, to ride their stocky and often stubborn little ponies and to play at lacrosse. He used also to paint his face and join them in their mimic war dances, in which be could yell as loudly any of his companions.
 When Jean was fifteen years of age his father moved westward and established trading post on the upper Missouri, near the Belted Buttes. Here he bought furs in connection with the Northwest Fur company.
 Jean left school, and for the next four years as- sisted his father in buying and trading "Indian goods for furs, and in caring for the great bales in the store-room, which had to be "camphored" and "tobaccoed" to protect them from dampness and moths When he was nineteen years old his father died of & wound received from 8 drunken Mandan MT. Darblaye's business affairs were not in pros porous condition at this time, and when his counts with the fur company were settled there were but few hundred dollars remaining for Jean.
 Left to shift for himself, the young frontiers man set to work at once with enterprise char acteristc of his Feeling that he had not the means nor the experience to enable him successfully to compete with the agents of the Northwest Fur company, he went to St. Louis, and there made engagements tor the sales of buffalo hides, tongues and "hump steak" He engaged 6 boat to make regular spring and fall trips to the Belted Buttes region for the loads of hides and meat which he proposed to furnish to the St. Louis market.
 Having purchased some improved guns and other articles needful for his undertaking he went back to the Great Bend of the Missouri hired three half breeds and their squaws as assistants, and turned buffalo hunter.
 The youpg hunters first season was prosperous one. He kept two yoke of oxen, a wagon and a driver busy for six weeks in hauling hides and meat to the storehouse to be cured and stored.
 Jean sent two boat-loads down the river the first autumn, two the next spring, and cleared about three hundred dollars of each cargo This amount he regarded fair return for his labor and invest ment as risks were scarcely counted in that region
 The months of September and October and of May and June were the periods in which the great herds migrated between their summer pastures on the high prairies of the British possessions and their winter feeding grounds along the Niobrara and the Platte. At these times the country about Jean's headquarters swarmed with buffalo.