From there to the head of the Arkansas river, I called Jonnie West and asked him to look at it. He examined it at every point and said, "This beats any thing I ever saw or heard tell of; with this to guide us, we could not get lost if we tried to."
We were now ready to start. Jonnie said to me, "Well, I feel we owe this
Indian something. How many butcher knives have you?"
I said, "I have two." "Alright, I will give him this finger ring and you give him one of your knives."
We did so, and I think he was the proudest Indian I ever saw; he jumped up and shouted, "Hy-you-scu-scum, white man," which meant "Good white man."
The Indians all shook hands with us and then mounted their horses and were gone. We now pulled out on our long and dangerous trip to Taos, New Mexico, and strange to say, we never missed a camping ground that the Indians had marked out for us, until we reached the head of the Arkansas river, and the beauty of it was, we had good grass and good water at every camping place, which was very essential for ourselves and our horses.
When we struck the head of the Arkansas river we considered ourselves out of danger of all hostile Indians. Besides, we knew every foot of the ground we had to travel over from here to Taos, New Mexico. We camped one night on the river, down below where Leadville stands now, and I never saw so many huckleberries at one place as I saw there. After we had our horses unpacked and staked out to grass, I said to the boys, "Now you go and pick berries, and I will try and find some meat for supper." I did not go far when looking up on a high bluff I saw a band of mountain sheep. I noticed they had not seen me yet and were coming directly towards me. When they got in gun-shot, I fired and killed a half-grown sheep, and he did not stop kicking until he was nearly at my feet. This was the first mountain sheep I had ever killed, and it was as fine a piece of meat as I ever ate, and until this day, mountain sheep is my favorite wild meat. This was one of the nights to be remembered, fine fresh meat, and ripe huckleberries, what luxuries, for the wilds to produce.
In a few days we reached Taos, and here I met my old friend Jim Bridger.
After laying around a few days and resting up, Jonnie West said to me,
"Will, what are we going to do this winter? You are like me, you can't
lay around without going wild."
I said, "That's so, Jonnie. Let's go and hunt up Jim Bridger, and ask him what he is going to do this winter."
We went to the house where Jim was boarding and we found him in one of his talkative moods. We asked him what he proposed doing this winter; he said, "I am going out a trapping, and I want you boys to go with me."
I asked him where he was going to trap, and he said he thought he would trap on the head of the Cache-la-Poudre, and the quicker we went the better it would be for us. "I have all the traps we will need this winter," he said; "now you boys go to work and mould a lot of bullets."
The reader will understand that in those days we used the muzzle-loading gun, and we had to mould all of our bullets. In a few days we were ready to pull out. I asked Jim if we could keep our horses with us through the winter. He said, "Yes, as the snow does not get very deep in that country, and there is plenty of Cotton Wood and Quaker Asp for them to browse on in case the snow gets deep. Besides, it will save one of us a long tramp in the spring, for we will have to have the horses in order to pack our furs on."
In a few days we were ready to pull for trapping ground. Each one of us took a saddle horse and two pack horses. We were on the road nine days from the day we left Taos until we reached our trapping ground.
We traveled down Cherry Creek from its source to its mouth, and across the Platte, where Denver City, Colorado, now stands. At that time there was not a sign of civilization in all that country.
After crossing the Platte a little below where Denver now stands, we met about five hundred Kiawah Indians, led by their old chief. The Kiawas were friendly to us, and the chief was a particular friend of Jim. He wanted to trade for some of our beaver traps. He kept bidding until he offered two horses for one trap. Jim refused to trade, but he made the chief a present of a trap. After Jim refused to take the horses, a young squaw came running out and offered to give me as fine a buffalo robe as I ever saw; I was in the act of taking it and was congratulating myself on what a fine bed I would have that winter when Jim said, "Will, don't take that. There is more stock on that robe than we can feed this winter. Open the hair and look for yourself."
I did so, and I saw the Grey Backs all through the hair as thick as they could crawl. I had never seen such a sight before, and the reader can imagine my horror. I dropped it so quick that Jonnie West laughed and asked me if it burnt me. The boys had the joke on me the balance of the winter. Most every day they would ask me if I didn't want a present of a Buffalo robe from a young squaw.
A few days after this, we were on our trapping ground, and our winter's work of toil, hardship, and pleasure had begun. We soon had our cabin built in a little valley, which was from a half mile to a mile wide and about eight miles long. On each side of the valley were high cliffs. In places there was a half a mile or more where neither man or beast could climb these cliffs, and we were surprised later on to see the quantity of game of various kinds that came into this valley to winter, such as Elk, Deer, and Antelope. I never, before or since, have seen so many Wild Cats, or Bob Cats, as they were called at that time, and also some cougars.
I remember one little circumstance that occurred later on; it was about the middle of the afternoon; we had all been to our traps and had returned to the cabin with our furs. Jim said, "Will, we will stretch your furs if you will go and shoot a deer for supper."
This suited me, so I took my gun and went outside the door to clean it. Just as I had got through, Jonnie West looked out and said, "Look, Will, there is your deer now; you won't have to hunt him."
I looked, and sure enough, there he was, in about a hundred yards of the cabin. Jim Bridger fired at him and knocked him down, but he got up and ran into a little bunch of brush. I ran to the spot, thinking he was only wounded and that I should have to shoot him again. When I reached the brush, to my surprise, I found five big wildcats, and they all came for me at once. I fired at the leader, and then I did some lively running myself. As soon as I got out of the brush, I called the boys, and we got the cats, the whole of the bunch, and the deer besides, which had not been touched by the cats.
We skinned the cats, and Jim afterwards made a cap out of one of them, and he wore it for several years.
Jonnie West and I were out hunting one day for deer when we discovered two cougars in the grass, and we could not make out what it meant. Finally one made a spring, and it seemed to us that he jumped at least twenty feet, and he landed on a deer, and for a minute or two there was a tussle. While this was going on Jonnie and I were getting closer to them, and when they had the deer killed we were within gunshot of them, and they didn't eat much before we killed them both. We skinned the deer, and also the cougars, and took them to camp, and when we went to Bent's Fort the next spring we got twenty dollars apiece for them, for they were extra large cougars, or mountain lions as they are sometimes called, and their hides are very valuable.
It seems wonderful to me when I think of the amount of game I saw through the country at that time, of all descriptions, some of which in their wild state are now extinct, especially the buffalo and the bison, and all other game that was so plentiful at that time is very scarce all over the west. I believe a man could have seen a thousand antelope any day in the year within five miles of where the city of Denver now stands.
We had splendid success this winter in trapping beaver. It was late in the spring when we left our trapping ground. Just before we pulled out Jim Bridger said, "Boys, I saw a pretty sight this evening out at the point of rocks," which was about a quarter of a mile from our cabin. Jonnie West said, "What did you see, Jim?"
"I saw an old Cinnamon bear and two cubs." Jonnie said, "Why didn't you kill her?"
"I didn't have anything to kill with," Jim replied. "I left my gun in the cabin, but we will all go out in the morning and see if we can find them."
We were all