Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/190

134 I would not promise him now, but would give him an answer later on.

The wedding being over, Johnnie West and I, after bidding Uncle Kit and his wife good-bye, started for Bent's Fort. Col. Bent and Mr. Roubidoux wanted to employ us to hunt for them the coming winter. Johnnie thought he could do better trapping, but I hired to them to hunt until the following spring.

Col. Bent always had from six to twenty boarders, having six men of his own, and I kept them in meat all winter, alone.

About the first of April--this being in 1854--I settled up with the Colonel, and having written Jim Beckwith the fall before that I would be on hand to go with him to California, I now pulled out for Taos.

I visited with Uncle Kit and his wife while at Taos, and found that what Mrs. Carson had said at the feast was true, for I was as welcome at their home as though I was one of the family.

Jim Beckwith had everything in readiness for our trip across the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

The day before starting, Uncle Kit asked us what route we would take. Jim said that we would go around by the headwaters of the Gila river, this being a tributary to the Colorado. On this trip we would cross that part of the country which is now Arizona. Uncle Kit said this was a good route, and that he had gone over it twice in company with Col. Fremont. He drew a diagram of the country, showing the route by streams, mountains and valleys; telling us also what tribes of Indians inhabited each section of the country that we would