one knew me. After I had wandered about the city a few days, trying to
find something to do to get a living, I chanced to meet what proved to
be the very best that could have happened to me. I met Kit Carson, the
world's most famous frontiersman, the man to whom not half the credit
has been given that was his due.

The time I met him, Kit Carson was preparing to go west on a trading
expedition with the Indians. When I say "going west" I mean far beyond
civilization. He proposed that I join him, and I, in my eagerness for
adventures in the wild, consented readily.

When we left St. Louis, we traveled in a straight western direction, or
as near west as possible. Fifty-eight years ago Missouri was a sparsely
settled country, and we often traveled ten and sometimes fifteen miles
without seeing a house or a single person.

We left Springfield at the south of us and passed out of the State of
Missouri at Fort Scott, and by doing so we left civilization behind, for
from Fort Scott to the Pacific coast was but very little known, and was
inhabited entirely by hostile tribes of Indians.

A great portion of the country between Fort Scott and the Rocky
Mountains that we traveled over on that journey was a wild, barren
waste, and we never imagined it would be inhabited by anything but wild
Indians, Buffalo, and Coyotes.

We traveled up the Neosha river to its source, and I remember one
incident in particular. We were getting ready to camp for the night
when Carson saw a band of Indians coming directly towards us. They were
mounted on horses and were riding very slowly and had their horses