Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/36

30 me nearly all the time, and when we were not haunting the gun factory, we were, as much as possible, in Mr. Carson's room at the hotel, listening to stories of adventure on the plains and among the mountains.

I became, at once, very much attached to Mr. Carson and I thought there was not another man in the United States equal to him—and there never has been, in his line. Besides, since the death of my mother he was the only one who had taken the slightest interest in me, or treated me like a human being, barring, of course, the Beckets and those persons who had helped me on my long walk from Nashville to St. Louis.

Finally Mr. Carson—whom I had now learned to address as Uncle Kit—said to me, one morning, that as my gun was about completed we would make preparations to start West. So we went out to a farm, about two miles from St. Louis, to get the horses from where Uncle Kit had left them to be cared for during the winter.

We went on foot, taking a rope, or riatta, as it is called by frontiersmen, and on the way to the farm I could think or talk of nothing but my new rifle, and the buffalo, deer, antelope and other game that I would kill when I reached the plains. Uncle Kit remarked that he had forgotten to get me a saddle, but that we would not have to wait to get one made, as there were plenty of saddles that would fit me already made, and that he would buy me one when he got back to town.

When we reached the farm where the horses were, Uncle Kit pointed out a little bay pony that had both his ears cropped off at the tips, and he said: