hipophagi as was the club of advanced Parisians a short time ago.
The roasted meat tasted as fine to them as though it was the choicest
slices from the bison or deer, and they ate and frolicked like so
many children let loose for a holiday.

But in the midst of their feast was heard a series of frightful
yells and whoops. The appalled Indians had scarcely time to turn
their eyes when a dozen horsemen, that seemed to have risen from
the very ground, thundered down upon them. Carson and his men
had overtaken the thieves and they now swept down upon them with
resistless fury. The fight was as short as it was fierce. The red
men fell on the right and left, and those who escaped the wrath of
the trappers, scattered and ran as if a hundred bomb shells were
exploding around them. Every horse stolen (except the six killed
for the feast) were recovered and Carson took them back to camp
without the loss of a man.

The hunters stayed until early autumn, when their employer decided
to go to New Mexico. The journey led for a great portion of the
way through a country over which they had travelled, and which
therefore was familiar to them. After halting a brief while at the
Mission of San Fernando, they arrived at Los Angeles, which like
the rest of the country as the reader knows, belonged to Mexico.
As it was apparent that the horsemen were hunters and trappers, the
authorities demanded their written license to pursue their calling
in Mexican territory. Such was the law and the officials were
warranted in making the demand, but it need not be said that the
party were compelled to admit they had nothing of the kind in their
possession.