He was about twelve miles from his comrades, when, turning round a small
hill, he perceived the long-sought object of his wishes. A small stream
glided smoothly in the middle of the prairie before him. It was the
river Cimaron. He hurried forward to moisten his parched lips, but just
as he was stooping over the water he fell, pierced by ten arrows. A band
of Comanches had espied him, and waited there for him. Yet he struggled
bravely. The Indians have since acknowledged that, wounded as he was,
before dying, Captain Smith had killed three of their people.

Such was the origin of the Santa Fé trade, and such are the liabilities
which are incurred even now, in the great solitudes of the West.




CHAPTER XIV.


Time passed away till I and my companions were heartily tired of our
inactivity: besides, I was home-sick, and I had left articles of great
value at the settlement, about which I was rather fidgety. So one day we
determined that we would start alone, and return to the settlement by a
different road. We left Santa Fé and rode towards the north, and it was
not until we had passed Taos, the last Mexican settlement, that we
became ourselves again and recovered our good spirits. Gabriel knew the
road; our number was too small not to find plenty to eat, and as to the
hostile Indians, it was a chance we were willing enough to encounter. A
few days after we had quitted Santa Fé, and when In the neighbourhood
of the Spanish Peaks and about thirty degrees north latitude, we fell in