“I know he has,” said Reuben quickly. “On that first trip one of the men in the party had an accident. He shot himself in the arm. Pretty soon the others decided that the only way for the poor chap to save his life was to have his arm cut off. I don’t know whether or not Kit Carson did the job, but I know that he helped. They used a razor, a saw, and a redhot wagon-bolt.” “Did the man get over it?” demanded Rat boisterously. “Yes. And he kept on with the others. He forded the rivers and climbed the mountains and followed along an Indian trail, over the track that the buffaloes had made, and never once dropped behind. When the party finally got to Santa Fé Kit Carson decided that he would not go back to Missouri, so he pushed on alone to Taos. That was eighty miles from Santa Fé. You know that is a trading station for trappers?” “So I have heard,” assented Rat. “Well, there wasn’t much in that place for Kit. He said the little, narrow streets had mud huts along their sides and that water was pretty scarce, but he always liked Taos, because it was there that he met Kincade.” “Who’s he?” “Didn’t you ever hear of Kincade? Why, he was one of the biggest trappers that ever got a skin in the Rocky Mountains. He knew all about the wild beasts and the places where the beaver dams were, and he knew where the Indians that troubled the trappers were likely to be found.” “He knew a lot, didn’t he?” laughed Rat. “Yes, he did. Kit Carson says he did. But what he liked best of all was that he knew Spanish, and he taught Kit how to speak it. He stayed there until spring, and then he decided that he would go back home and start out trapping on his own account. So he joined a party of trappers that were going East and started to go home, but he hadn’t gone halfway across the prairies before he met some more trappers that were on their way to Santa Fé, and what they said to him made him change his plans.” CHAPTER VI—ALONE “What did he do then?” inquired Rat, who, for some reason which Reuben did not understand, appeared to be intensely interested in the life of the scout who had already become famous throughout the West. “Why, they offered him a chance to go back with them, and be their hunter, so he joined the new party. He told me, though, that he didn’t find any fun in his work. A good deal of the time he was driving a team, and that was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.” “I suppose he wanted to shoot buffaloes and hunt Indians?”