This ended our trouble with the Indians for this trip.

On arriving at Santa Fe, Uncle Kit and Jim Bridger sold their furs to Joe Favor and Mr. Roubidoux for a good price.

Here we met an Englishman, who lived in London, England, and had come that spring from St. Louis, in company with Mr. Roubidoux and Joe Favor.

I had my pet panther with me, and the Englishman took a fancy to her and asked my price for her.  I told him that she was not for sale.  He offered me a hundred dollars for her.  I hated to part with her, but a hundred dollars was more money than I had ever had before at one time, and looked like a big lot to me, so I accepted his offer, and in less than twenty-four hours I was very sorry, for during the time I stayed in Santa Fe, every time that I would pass in sight of her she would cry as pitifully as any child ever heard.  Five hundred dollars would not have bought her from Mr. Mace, as he had purchased her with the intention of taking her to England.

Mr. Roubidoux and Joe Favor employed Uncle Kit to go out and trade for buffalo robes with the Comanche and Kiowa Indians.  I accompanied him on this trip, and we were out two months, during which time we did not see a white man.

This was the first shipment of buffalo robes that had ever been made from this region, consequently we were able to get them almost at our own price.

As soon as Uncle Kit got out there with his little stock of goods that had been furnished him to trade on, and which consisted of beads and rings and a very few blankets, and the Indians had learned that he would trade for robes, the squaws all fell to dressing them.  Among the Indians it was considered disgraceful for men to do such work.

In a very short time there were plenty of dressed buffalo robes, and some very nice ones, and I have seen Uncle Kit trade a string of beads a foot and a half long for a first-class robe, and for a red blanket he could get almost as many robes as he had a mind to ask.

As fast as the robes were bought they were baled, and by the time Uncle Kit pretty well bought up all that were for sale, the wagon-train came and hauled them away.

There were twenty wagon loads of robes and the goods Uncle Kit traded for them would not have cost to exceed seventy-five dollars.

Our work being done, we started for Taos, for it was now almost time to start out for the winter’s trapping.  On our arrival at Taos we found Johnnie West, who had been loafing around for two months, and who was anxious to get at work again.  Uncle Kit hired him to go with us to South Park to trap the coming winter, that being the place he had decided upon for the season’s work.

CHAPTER VII.

Battling three days’ battle between the Comanches and the Utes for the possession of A “Hunter’s paradise.”—­An unseasonable Bath.