OCR Text |
Show "Nate" Thompson SO old man "Nate" Thompson is gone. His "one boss shay" did not run quite one hundred hun-dred years before it became dust but it come very nearly doing it. Ho was born May 15th, 1825, so he was over ninety years of age. I He was a contemporary with Ensign peak, Mount Davidson and the time when the Snake river finally ground its way through the lava beds and went exultingly on its' way to om the Columbia. Co-lumbia. When the contingent of Price's army realized, after that day at Wilson creek, that it was up hill business to fight the stars and stripes and deciding decid-ing that it was good to follow Mr. Greeley's ad-f ad-f vice and go west, and finally brought up In Mon tana, they found Nate Thompson, and that he was called "one of the old settlers." To digress for a moment. Those "Rebs" were really the victors at Wilson creek, but It was a victory that was not encouraging. It was the man who was in command on the other side, that demoralized them. He was a Connecticut Yankee named Nathanial Lyon. One of those on the other side told the writer about him. Ho said: "I would not have been in his place for a thousand dollars a minute for oi hours on that day. He was in the old-fashior jd uniform of a general, golden epaulettes, plumes j and gold braid, all easily distinguishable from our side. Moreover ho was riding a big grey horse, and every sharp-shooter on our side was trying to pick him off. With a fow regulars and the rest raw Iowa volunteers, in all about six thousand thou-sand men he seemed to bo trying to surround our twelve thousand. He in person led those volunteers volun-teers on an assault of our columns three times. The third time ho was killed but the memory of him on that day is with us yet." "Nate" Thompson was in Montana when they arrived, doing business at the old stand. "Nate" was a born sporting man, but he was not like some of that fraternity. He was dead square. Ho '$ knew some fow little things about cards, and horse-racing ho had reduced to so exact a science that for the past thirty-five years ho has been an authority on that subject from which there was no appeal. Like a real blood horse there was not a drop of cold blood in "Nate." He was familiar with all the camps of Montana, Nevada and Utah; he now and then took a drink but never smoked; his even temperament was the same morning, noon and late at night; he loved his friends and if he had now and then an enemy, he simply had no use for him. When he was born "every part was just as strong ez the rest" and so when ho died there was no illness he just ran down and stopped. Wherever he was known, and that means everywhere every-where in the west, when his death is announced the response will be: "He was true blue." |