[Illustration: “IT’S AN INDIAN,” SPOKE THE TRAPPER] IN THE ROCKIES WITH KIT CARSON _By_ JOHN T. McINTYRE _Illustrations by_ Ralph L. Boyer and A. Edwin Kromer [Illustration] THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY PHILADELPHIA 1913 COPYRIGHT 1913 BY THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY [Illustration] Contents I. THE TRAPPER OF TAOS AND SANTA FÉ 7 II. AROUND THE CAMP-FIRE 24 III. THE TRAPPERS TAKE THE TRAIL 39 IV. INDIAN SIGNS--AND INDIANS! 53 V. WHITE MAN VERSUS RED ON THE COLORADO 67 VI. TWO NIGHTS OF DANGER 77 VII. HOW THE TRAPPERS RETALIATED 91 VIII. KIT REACHES SANTA FÉ ONCE MORE 102 IX. IN THE COUNTRY OF THE HOSTILES 124 X. A DESPERATE EXPERIENCE WITH GRIZZLIES 145 XI. THE BULLY OF THE TRADING CAMP 156 XII. LOPEZ RIDES INTO CAMP 175 XIII. THE VILLAGE OF THE BLACKFEET 191 XIV. THE LAST BATTLE 202 XV. SKETCH OF CARSON’S LIFE 212 Illustrations PAGE “IT’S AN INDIAN,” SPOKE THE TRAPPER _Frontispiece_ “WHAT IS IT?” ASKED THE BOYS 43 “SO YOU ARE HERE?” 113 “REDSKINS!” 137 In the Rockies With Kit Carson CHAPTER I THE TRAPPER OF TAOS AND SANTA FÉ Late one afternoon when the sunlight was slanting through the trees and wavering upon the adobe walls of the Pueblo of Los Angeles, when the only sounds were the whispering winds in the higher boughs, and the thrumming of a stringed instrument from the soldiers’ quarters, a tall Spanish mule came clattering into the village with two boys astride its back. They were bronzed, sinewy looking youngsters; each held a long barreled rifle. A barefooted sentry, his piece over his shoulder, looked up at the sudden sound; and as the mule was abruptly checked beside him, and the two lads slipped from its back, he whipped his weapon about and with a brown thumb upon the trigger, cried: “Halt!” The elder of the two lads wiped his forehead with his sleeve; then to the other he said: “Hold tight to that old chap, Joe; we may have further use for him, you know.” “I hope not,” declared Joe, ruefully. “He’s got a back like a buck-saw, and a gait like a dromedary. And between the two he’s the worst thing I ever rode.” The elder boy saluted the sentinel. “We are strangers,” he said, in good Spanish. “We belong to the trading schooner ‘Gadfly’ now off the coast; and we are in pursuit of a man named Lopez who ran away.” The sentry grinned. “A deserter?” “He is. But we don’t object to that so much as we do the fact that he’s a thief as well. He robbed us, swam ashore, and the last seen of him he was heading toward this village.”