As soon as our cabin was built, Juan returned to Taos with the
horses and we set into our winter's employment.

In those days hunters never wore boots or shoes, but moccasins
from the tanned hides of elk. This winter we made enough gloves
and moccasins to last us for two years, and each made himself a
buckskin suit, out and out.

Game was very plentiful in that country, such as moose, elk and
deer, and early in the winter a few mountain buffalo.

We were successful this winter, our beaver catch being nearly
eight hundred. The winter was also an unusually long one, lasting
until far into April.

After the snow had gone off so that we could travel, Jim Hughes,
who had been our foreman, in the absence of Carson, asked me if I
thought I could find the way back to Taos, which I said I could.
He said that one of us would have to go and get our horses to pack
the furs in on.

It was now the spring of 1849 and I was seventeen years old, but
it looked to me to be a big undertaking for a boy of my age, a
trip of three hundred miles, a foot and alone, with my rifle and
blankets; but some one had to go, and I agreed to tackle the trip.

This was on Saturday, and as we never worked on Sundays, except to
tend the traps, Mr. Hughes and Johnnie West talked the matter over
and decided that before I started away we had better cache the