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