In the Rockies with Kit Carson — Context and Discussion

’re ready to take the trail back to Taos.”

About a mile south of the Pueblo of Los Angeles they came upon the trappers’ camp, a row of huts made of boughs, sod and bark. A number of buckskin-clad men lay about upon blankets or buffalo robes; others were cooking the evening meal at the camp-fire; while others again were cleaning their rifles or honing their broad-bladed hunting knives.

“There’s Young, the trader who took out this expedition,” said the young trapper. “What are your names, boys? I’ll introduce you.”

“Mine’s Dave Johnson; I’m from Boston,” announced that young gentleman.

“And I’m Joe Frazier, from Charleston,” said the other. Then, curiously: “What’s yours?”

“My name’s Kit Carson,” the trapper informed them; “once of Kentucky, later of Missouri, but now of Taos and Santa Fé.”

The two lads were warmly greeted by Mr. Ewing Young, the Taos trader and leader of the trapper band.

“A rather narrow squeak,” was his comment, when told of their misadventure; “the captain back there at the Pueblo is anxious to get his revenge upon an Americano because of the trouble he’s had with us, and you lads would have pleased him well enough.”

Ewing Young was a very well-known trader and trapper. Some time before he had sent out a company in search of fur from Santa Fé toward the Colorado River country. On their way they were attacked by an Indian war party; after a desperate fight against great odds, the hunters were forced to fall back and make their way toward New Mexico once more.

“But that just made me fighting mad,” said the trapper chief to the boys, “so I got together a party of forty Americans, Canadians and Frenchmen. At about the head of the Salt River we came on that identical war party which had so roughly handled my first company.”

Kit Carson laughed as though at some amusing reminiscence.

“I never saw any parsel of humans so tickled as those redskins were,” said he. “They had licked us once, and they figured they’d do it the second time even quicker than the first.”

The boys were seated upon a bearskin which one of the men had thrown upon the ground for them; night was settling and the camp-fires blazed cheerily; strips of venison, from the tenderest portions of bucks which had fallen before the rifle that day, were being roasted at each fire, and the savory smell filled the air. The horses and mules belonging to the outfit were safely picketed a little distance off; the adventurers laughed and chatted and performed the duties of the camp in high good humor.

“I reckon, Cap’n,” said one old grizzled fellow with a wrinkled, weather-beaten face and the clear eyes of a boy, “that them thar reds hadn’t any idee how many there was of us. If they had they’d not been in such a precious hurry to come to hand grips.”

“And the captain didn’t want them to know,” Kit Carson informed the boys. “He picked out a nice likely place and put about twenty-five men there in ambush. The Indians off there in front noticed us halt to do this, and got it into their heads that we were kind of chicken-hearted in the matter. And as the rest of us started toward them they made a charge. We fell back until they were well into the trap. Then the boys in the ambush jumped up and gave them one volley; and away went the whole band of warriors as fast as they could go, and never once looked back to see what had happened to them.”

“I counted fifteen braves who’ll never draw another bow ’cept in the Happy Hunting Grounds,” said the grizzled old trapper. “And besides that, there were the wounded. That’s the way to hit at the varmints; and it’s the only way to make it safe for a white man to set his traps along the streams in this region. Teach ’em a lesson, says I; and make it one that they’ll not forget, while you’re about it.”

But while the savages were defeated they were not altogether discomfited; for they doggedly held to the trail of the trappers. Along the Salt to the San Francisco River, they had pursued them, and all the way along this stream to its very head waters; their depredations were secret and under cover of darkness; the men learned to avoid the camp-fires, for at any moment a deadly arrow might come hissing from the darkness; horses and mules were killed and maimed; traps were stolen constantly.