Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/280

212 Lieut. Harding asked; "Why not all go together?" I replied that after we got out in the woods I did not think they could tell a man from a deer, and I did not want to be shot by a white man out here in this country. Capt. Mills proposed that three go at a time, two officers and myself; by so doing there would be no danger.

This being satisfactory, Lieut. Harding, Capt. Mills and myself took the first turn. Neither of them had ever hunted any, and both were as ignorant in that line as I was when I started out from St. Louis in Company with Uncle Kit Carson, which, by the way, I had told them something about the night before, while sitting around the camp-fire. When we were all ready for the hunt and had started to walk away from the tent, Capt. Mills re quested the Colonel to have the horses in readiness to pack the deer in. We had not gone far until I asked them if they could not walk without making so much

Sitting around the camp-fire.