Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/145

Rh England, and had come that spring from St. Louis, in company with Mr. Roubidoux and Joe Favor.

I had my pet panther with me, and the Englishman took a fancy to her and asked my price for her. I told him that she was not for sale. He offered me a hundred dollars for her. I hated to part with her, but a hundred dollars was more money than I had ever had before at one time, and looked like a big lot to me, so I accepted his offer, and in less than twenty-four hours I was very sorry, for during the time I stayed in Santa Fe, every time that I would pass in sight of her she would cry as pitifully as any child ever heard. Five hundred dollars would not have bought her from Mr. Mace, as he had purchased her with the intention of taking her to England.

Mr. Roubidoux and Joe Favor employed Uncle Kit to go out and trade for buffalo robes with the Comanche and Kiowa Indians. I accompanied him on this trip, and we were out two months, during which time we did not see a white man.

This was the first shipment of buffalo robes that had ever been made from this region, consequently we were able to get them almost at our own price.

As soon as Uncle Kit got out there with his little stock of goods that had been furnished him to trade on, and which consisted of beads and rings and a very few blankets, and the Indians had learned that he would trade for robes, the squaws all fell to dressing them. Among the Indians it was considered disgraceful for men to do such work.

In a very short time there were plenty of dressed buf-