With my father I found the three trappers; two of whom were preparing to start for California, but the third, a young Parisian, who went by the name of Gabriel, preferred remaining with us, and never left me until a long time afterwards, when we parted upon the borders of the Mississippi, when I was forcing my way towards the Atlantic Ocean.  He and Roche, when I parted with them, had directed their steps back to the Shoshones; they delighted too much in a life of wild and perilous adventure to leave it so soon, and the Irishman vowed that if he ever returned within the pale of civilization, it would be to Monterey, the only place where, in his long wanderings, he had found a people congenial to his own ideas.

When, in the meeting of a great council, I apprised the tribe of the attack made upon the boat-house by the Umbiquas, and of its results, there was a loud burst of satisfaction.  I was made a War-Chief on the spot; and it was determined that a party should immediately proceed to chastise the Umbiquas.  My father did not allow me to join it, as there was much to be done in settling the affairs of the Prince, and paying the debts he had contracted at Fort Hall; consequently, I led a clerk’s life for two months, writing accounts, &c.—­rather a dull occupation, for which I had not the smallest relish.  During this time, the expedition against the Umbiquas had been still more successful than that against the Crows, and, in fact, that year was a glorious one for the Shoshones, who will remember it a long while, as a period in which leggings and moccasins were literally sewn with human hair, and in which the blanched and unburied bones of their enemies, scattered on the prairie, scared even the wolves from crossing the Buena Ventura.  Indeed, that year was so full of events, that my narration would be too much swelled if I were to enumerate them all.

I had not forgotten the cachette at our landing-place.  Every thing was transferred to the boat-house, and the hot days of summer having already begun to render the settlement unpleasant, we removed to the sea-shore, while the major part of the tribe went to hunt in the rolling prairies of the south.

The presents of the good people of Monterey proved to be a great acquisition to my father.  There were many books, which he appropriated to himself; being now too aged and infirm to bear the fatigues of Indian life, he had become fond of retirement and reading.  As to Gabriel and Roche, we became inseparable, and though in some points we were not on an equality, yet the habit of being constantly together and sharing the same tent united us like brothers.

As my readers will eventually discover, many daring deeds did we perform together, and many pleasant days did we pass, both in the northern cities of Mexico and western prairies of Texas, hunting with the Comanches, and occasionally unmasking some rascally Texans, who, under the paint of an Indian, would commit their murders and depredations upon the remote settlements of their own countrymen.