Christopher Carson | Page 8

obey. He
led the company, selecting the route, and he decided when and where to
encamp. The procession followed usually in single file, a long line.
Early in the morning, at the sound of the bugle, all sprang from their
couches which nature had spread, and they spent no more time at their
toilet than did the horse or the cow. After a hurried breakfast they
commenced their march. Generally an abundance of game was found
on the way. The animals always walked slowly along, being never put
to the trot.
At noon the leader endeavored to find some spot near a running stream
or a spring, where the animals could find pasture. The resting for a
couple of hours gave them time for their dinner, which they had mainly
picked up by the way.
An hour or two before sundown the camping ground was selected, the
animals were tethered, often in luxuriant grass, and the hardy pioneers,
by no means immoderately fatigued by the day's journey, having eaten
their supper, which a good appetite rendered sumptuous, spent the time
till sleep closed their eyelids in telling stories and singing songs. A very
careful guard was set, and the adventurers enjoyed sound sleep till, with
the dawn, the bugle call again summoned them. Under ordinary
circumstances hardy men of a roving turn of mind, found very great
attractions in this adventurous life. They were by no means willing to
exchange its excitements for the monotonous labors of the field or the
shop.
CHAPTER II.

Life in the Wilderness.
A Surgical Operation.--A Winter with Kin Cade.--Study of the
Languages and Geography.--Return towards Missouri.--Engagement
with a new Company and Strange Adventures.--The
Rattlesnake.--Anecdote of Kit Carson.--The Sahara.--New
Engagements.--Trip to El Paso.--Trapping and Hunting.--Prairie
Scenery.--The Trapper's Outfit.--Night Encampment.--Testimony of an
Amateur Hunter.
The company of traders which Kit had joined enjoyed, on the whole, a
prosperous expedition. They met with no hostile Indians and, with one
exception, encountered nothing which they could deem a hardship.
There was one exception, which most persons would deem a terrible
one. The accidental discharge of a gun, incautiously handled, shattered
a man's arm, shivering the bone to splinters. The arm rapidly grew
inflamed, became terribly painful, and must be amputated or the life
lost. There was no one in the party who knew anything of surgery. But
they had a razor, a handsaw and a bar of iron.
It shows the estimation in which the firm, gentle, and yet almost
womanly Kit Carson was held, that he was chosen to perform the
operation. Two others were to assist him. The sufferer took his seat,
and was held firmly, that in his anguish his struggles might not
interfere with the progress of the knife. This boy of but eighteen years
then, with great apparent coolness, undertook this formidable act of
surgery.
He bound a ligature around the arm very tightly, to arrest, as far as
possible the flow of blood. With the razor he cut through the quivering
muscles, tendons and nerves. With the handsaw he severed the bone.
With the bar of iron, at almost a white heat, he cauterized the wound.
The cruel operation was successful. And the patient, under the
influence of the pure mountain air, found his wound almost healed
before he reached Santa Fe.
Having arrived at his journey's end, Kit's love of adventure led him not
to return with the traders, by the route over which he had just passed,

but to push on still further in his explorations. About eighty miles
northeast of Santa Fe there was another Spanish settlement, weird-like
in its semi-barbarous, semi-civilized aspects, with its huts of sun-baked
clay, its Catholic priests, its Mexican Indians and its half-breeds. It was
a small, lonely settlement, whose population lived mainly, like the
Indians, upon corn-meal and the chase. Kit ever kept his trusty rifle
with him. His gun and hatchet constituted his purse, furnishing him
with food and lodging.
It was a mountainous region; here in one of the dells, Kit came across
the solitary hut of a mountaineer by the name of Kin Cade. They took a
mutual liking to each other. As Kit could at any day, with his rifle bring
in food enough to last a week, the question of board did not come into
consideration. It was in the latter part of November that Kit first entered
the cabin of this hunter. Here he spent the winter. His bed consisted
probably of husks of corn covered with a buffalo robe, a luxurious
couch for a healthy and weary man. Pitch pine knots brilliantly
illumined the hut in the evening. Traps were set to catch animals for
their furs. Deer skins were softly tanned and colored for clothing, with
ornamental fringes for coats and leggins and moccasins. Kit and his