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
companion Kin were their own tailors.