“That’s exactly what happened to me. I don’t see how you shot him.” “I think it must have been pure luck. I got the pony quiet for a minute and turned around and fired at the beast when it was not more than ten or twelve feet away. A blind man couldn’t have missed it.” Reuben had his own thoughts as to the truthfulness of the modest declaration, but he did not give expression to them. In response to the questions of the scout, he modestly related the incident which had befallen him in his own journey in the same region. “You were a lucky lad,” said Kit Carson warmly. “And you couldn’t have acted better if you had been sixty-one instead of sixteen. You never had seen one before, had you?” “No.” “I don’t understand yet why it was that you didn’t put your pony into a run and try to escape. It was lucky for you that you didn’t, for if you had tried it the beast would have got you as sure as fate.” “I had heard Jean tell about the lions, and all that he had said flashed into my mind in a minute. And I saw a man at San Gabriel that looked so much like Jean that I was almost sure that it was he.” “Are you sure that he wasn’t?” “No, and that’s what puzzles me most of all. You see I left him the other side of the Rocky Mountains. It can’t be possible that he made his way all alone through the Rockies, and across the plains and over the Sierras into San Gabriel. Besides, this man looks as if he was either crazy or a fool. There’s something the matter with him anyway. He stared at me as if I was like air and he could look straight through me.” “I never met a man like that,” said Kit Carson quietly, smiling as he spoke. “I guess it will turn out all right, and, besides, you may have several chances to see him again in the next few days. We’re going to load up our ponies with the furs we have taken, or at least with a part of them, and send them down to Captain White.” “What is he going to do with them?” “Take them to New York for us. We shan’t let him have all that we have taken, but it will save a long hard ride if we let him have some of them here, and besides, I think now we shall trap much of the way back to Taos. By the time we get there we ought to have a load that will satisfy every man, to say nothing of our horses.” In the three weeks that followed, all the ponies of the camp were brought into service. They were heavily loaded with the skins that the trappers had secured and then began their long journey to the _Charming Nancy_. A careful record was kept, and a division among the trappers of the amount received from the sales of furs was to be made later. Soon afterward the men returned to their camp and for several days were busily engaged in other tasks. Indeed, they were unusually successful, and the piles of beaver skins steadily mounted higher and higher.