Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/182

166 thus talking and tying up the plow irons, a party passing stopped and asked what he was going to do with them. He replied, "I am going to try farming a while down at Taos."

This man, whom I afterwards identified from his photos as Kit Carson, interested me. He was a man five feet nine or ten inches at the most, but strongly framed in breast and shoulders; light brown hair, flaxy at the ends; eyes steel blue, or gray. I watched him ride away, while I told Captain Morrison I was going up to the fort to try to trade my shotgun.

I saw the man throw the plow irons down at a camp close by the trail and continue on up to the stockade, whither I followed him. James Bridger was doing his own trading—a powerful built man about the height of the one I have described, but coarser made and coarser minded, as I thought. Quick and sharp at a bargain, he said, as soon as I had shown him the gun and stated that I wanted deerskins for it, "Young man, I can't do it; we get few deerskins here. I'll give you ten goat (antelope) skins; that's the best I can do." I took him at his word, not knowing the difference between dressed unsmoked antelope and good dressed smoked deerskins. I started to camp satisfied with my purchase. I passed the camp where I had seen the plow irons thrown down, and a very comely woman, evidently not full Indian, was saddling and packing two of the finest mules I ever saw. (Many years afterwards I concluded this was the Mexican wife of Kit Carson, recently married, and they were now going to farm on her inheritance near Toas, New Mexico, where he resided until gold was discovered in California.)

I was unsettled part of this day, and in the evening I asked Captain Morrison if he could now dispense with my assistance, telling him that I felt inclined to try a