Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/392

288 found more furs and robes there awaiting our arrival than we could load on our horses. In all we made four trips that winter, and Col. Bent told me some time afterward that they cleared a thousand dollars on each cargo.

When spring came Jim Bridger and I went to Taos and visited Uncle Kit for about a month.

This was now the spring of 1859 and the excitement over the gold mines around Pike's Peak was running high. We all knew where Pike's Peak was, for any day when it was clear we could see it very plainly from Bent's Fort or Taos, but we did not know just where the mines were. Jim proposed that we take a trip out there and see about the mines. So we talked the matter over until I was finally attacked with that disease which was then known as "the gold fever."

About the first of June we made a break for the gold fields. We crossed the Arkansas river near Fountain ca-booyah (or something like that)--(Fountain qui Bouille, Boiling Fountain)--and did not go far from there until we struck a wagon road, which showed there had been much travel, and we could see that it had not been long since a wagon passed.

We were very much surprised at a wagon road in this portion of country, but there it was just the same. We did not travel on this road very far until we overtook a large train of emigrants, and on making inquiry we learned that they were on their way to Pike's Peak.

Jim Bridger laughingly remarked: "If you are not careful you will pass Pike's Peak before you go there, for there is the mountain," pointing to the Peak, the foot of which we were just then passing. At this another man