Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/136

98 The first river we came to, Juan asked me if I could swim. I told him that I did not know, as I had never had a trial. We stripped down, tied our clothing about our shoulders and mounted our horses again.

I wanted Juan to take the lead and let me drive the horses after him, but he thought we had best ride side by side and let the pack-animals follow, so in case of accident we could help each other. We made it across safe, and from this time on we never hesitated at a stream.

We were thirty-one days making the trip to the City of Mexico.

I found Mr. Reed at his residence and paid the two hundred and fifty dollars to him. He was much astonished at Uncle Kit sending two boys eleven hundred miles to pay so small a debt, and said that he had not expected to get the money until such time as Carson might be coming that way on other business, for it was so far that he would not have gone after it and taken the chances of crossing the country between the City of Mexico and Taos, as we had done, for the two hundred and fifty dollars.

But Uncle Kit owed this money and had agreed to pay it at a certain time, and he, like many other frontiersman, valued his word more than he did his gold.

We laid over two days at the City of Mexico in order to let our horses rest. The day before we were to start, Mr. Reed, who had invited us to his residence to board while in the City, went out to where our horses were, and seeing that one of the horses had a sore back, told me that he would make me a present of a horse that,