That afternoon after having his business attended to, Uncle Kit went to Mr. Favor and said:  “Joe, I want you and your friends from St. Louis to come and take supper with me this evening at the same hotel where we had supper last evening.”

When Uncle Kit spoke in this manner Mr. Favor felt sure that he had changed his mind in regard to having his life written up, and before going to supper, in the absence of Uncle Kit, Mr. Favor asked me about it.  I told him he had not.  Whereupon he proposed betting me a new hat that those parties would write up his, Kit Carson’s, life.  I said; “Not by his consent.”  “Yes,” said he, “by his own consent.”

This bet I accepted, and that night Mr. Favor and all of his St. Louis friends accompanied us from the store down to the hotel for supper.  There was one gentleman in the crowd who was a splendid talker, and apparently an intelligent man, and when at the supper table that night, he mentioned the matter to Uncle Kit again of having his life published.  On turning his eyes to the refined gentleman, he said:  “I would have you understand that when I say anything I mean it.  I told you in plain English last evening that I would not submit to anything of that kind, and now don’t compel me to talk too harsh, but please drop the subject at once.”

Mr. Favor, who had been watching very close all this time, could see at once there was no use in talking any more about the subject and turned the conversation as quickly as possible and there was no more said about it.

That night while in a conversation with Buffalo Bill he told Uncle Kit and I that he would be going out to Bent’s Fort in a few days and proposed that we join him there and have a buffalo hunt before I went away.  We promised that we would meet him.

The next morning Uncle Kit and I mounted our horses to start on our return trip to Taos, and when we rode up in front of the store, Mr. Favor told me to come in and get my hat.  I told him no, that I would not take it now, but let it go until next spring when I returned.  He said to call and get it any time, saying:  “You won it fair.”

After we had ridden but a short distance I told Uncle Kit how I came to win the hat, and he said:  “I think them St. Louis men are gentlemen, but I don’t propose to have any one write up my life.  I have got plenty to keep me as long as I live and I do not like notoriety.”  And just here I would say, that to a man that roughed it out on the plains in those days as we old frontiersmen had to do, they did not feel that a history of their lives would be fit to go before the public, for as Uncle Kit said:  “A man on the frontier had to undergo many hardships, that if written up true, just as they occurred, people in the civilized countries would not believe them when they read it.”

On my arrival at Taos I bought ten Mexican jacks or burros to use for pack animals on the trip that we were about to start upon.  After that we started for Bent’s Fort where we joined Buffalo Bill and Col.  Bent and struck out for the “Picket Wire”—­Purgatoire—­on a buffalo hunt.