“What I know, an’ have been sayin’!  Let’s have a drink, Kit, fer old times.”

Laughing, Carson turned his pockets inside out.  As he did so something heavy fell from his pocket to the floor.  In courtesy as much as curiosity Bridger stooped first to pick it up.  As he rose he saw Carson’s face change as he held out his hand.

“What’s this stone, Kit—­yer medicine?”

But Bridger’s own face altered suddenly as he now guessed the truth.  He looked about him suddenly, his mouth tight.  Kit Carson rose and they passed from the room.

“Only one thing heavy as that, Mister Kit!” said Bridger fiercely.  “Where’d you git hit?  My gran’pap had some o’ that.  Hit come from North Carliny years ago.  I know what hit is—­hit’s gold!  Kit Carson, damn ye, hit’s the gold!”

“Shut your mouth, you fool!” said Carson.  “Yes, it’s gold.  But do you want me to be a liar to my General?  That’s part of my dispatches.”

“Hit” come from Californy?”

“Curse me, yes, California!  I was ordered to get the news to the Army first.  You’re loose-tongued, Jim.  Can you keep this?”

“Like a grave, Kit.”

“Then here!”

Carson felt inside his shirt and pulled out a meager and ill-printed sheet which told the most epochal news that this or any country has known—­the midwinter discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mills.

A flag was flying over Laramie stockade, and this flag the mountain men saw fit to salute with many libations, hearing now that it was to fly forever over California as over Oregon.  Crowding the stockade inclosure full was a motley throng—­border men in buckskins, engages swart as Indians, French breeds, full-blood Cheyennes and Sioux of the northern hills, all mingling with the curious emigrants who had come in from the wagon camps.  Plump Indian girls, many of them very comely, some of them wives of the trappers who still hung about Laramie, ogled the newcomers, laughing, giggling together as young women of any color do, their black hair sleek with oil, their cheeks red with vermilion, their wrists heavy with brass or copper or pinchbeck circlets, their small moccasined feet peeping beneath gaudy calico given them by their white lords.  Older squaws, envious but perforce resigned, muttered as their own stern-faced stolid red masters ordered them to keep close.  Of the full-bloods, whether Sioux or Cheyennes, only those drunk were other than sullenly silent and resentful as they watched the white man’s orgy at Old Laramie on the Fourth of July of 1848.

Far flung along the pleasant valley lay a vast picture possible in no other land or day.  The scattered covered wagons, the bands of cattle and horses, the white tents rising now in scores, the blue of many fires, all proved that now the white man had come to fly his flag over a new frontier.

Bridger stood, chanting an Indian song.  A group of men came out, all excited with patriotic drink.  A tall man in moccasins led, his fringed shirt open over a naked breast, his young squaw following him.