At daylight the Pawnees attacked in earnest and the fight lasted nearly three days, the mule teams being shut in the corral without food or water. At midnight of the second day they hitched up, fighting their way for thirteen miles, then got into bad trouble fording Pawnee Fork while the Indians poured lead and arrows into the teams until the colonel and Kit Carson led a terrific charge which dispersed the enemy. That fight cost the train four killed and seven wounded. It was during this first trip that Carson saved the life of a wounded teamster by cutting off his arm. With a razor he cut the flesh, with a saw got through the bone, and with a white-hot king-bolt seared the wound, stopping the flow of blood. In 1835 Carson was hunter for Bent’s Fort, keeping the garrison of forty men supplied with buffalo meat. Once he was out hunting with six others and they made their camp tired out. “I saw,” says Kit, “two big wolves sneaking about, one of them quite close to us. Gordon, one of my men, wanted to fire his rifle at it, but I would not let him for fear he would hit a dog. I admit that I had a sort of idea that these wolves might be Indians; but when I noticed one of them turn short around and heard the clashing of his teeth as he rushed at one of the dogs, I felt easy then, and was certain that they were wolves sure enough. But the red devil fooled me after all, for he had two dried buffalo bones in his hands under the wolf-skin and he rattled them together every time he turned to make a dash at the dogs! Well, by and by we all dozed off, and it wasn’t long before I was suddenly aroused by a noise and a big blaze. I rushed out the first thing for our mules and held them. If the savages had been at all smart, they could have killed us in a trice, but they ran as soon as they fired at us. They killed one of my men, putting five shots in his body and eight in his buffalo robe. The Indians were a band of snakes, and found us by sheer accident. They endeavored to ambush us the next morning, but we got wind of their little game and killed three of them, including the chief.” It was in his eight years as hunter for Bent’s Fort that Kit learned to know the Indians, visiting their camps to smoke with the chiefs and play with the little boys. When the Sioux nation invaded the Comanche and Arrapaho hunting-grounds he persuaded them to go north, and so averted war.