"All the folks in the settlement what seen Paul took a great fancy to him. Some wanted to adopt him, and some said I'd ought to take him to St. Louis and place him in an orphan asylum; but I 'lowed if there was going to be any adopting done, I'd do it myself, 'cause the kid seemed now just as if he was my own; besides the little fellow I know'd loved me and didn't want me to leave him. I had kin-folks in Independence, an old aunt, and me and Paul staid there. She had a young gal with her, and she learned Paul out of books; so he picked up considerable, as we had to wait more than two months before Colonel St. Vrain's caravan was ready to start for New Mexico. "I bought Paul a coal-black pony, and had a suit of fine buckskin made for him out of the pelt of a black-tail deer I'd shot the winter before on Powder River. The seams of his trousers was heavily fringed, and with his white sombrero, a riding around town on his pony, he looked like one of them Spanish Dons what the papers nowadays has pictures of; only he was smarter-looking than any Don I ever see in my life. "It was 'bout the last of August when we pulled out from Independence. Comstock staid with us until we got ready to go, and then lit out for St. Louis, and I hain't never seen him since. The caravan had seventy-five six-mule teams in it, without counting ours, loaded with dry-goods and groceries for Mora, New Mexico, where Colonel St. Vrain, the owner, lived and had a big store. We had no trouble with the Ingins going back across the plains; we seen lots, to be sure, hanging on our trail, but they never attacked us; we was too strong for them. "'Bout the last of September we reached Bent's Old Fort, on the Arkansas, where the Santa Fe Trail crosses the river into New Mexico, and we camped there the night we got to it. "I know'd they had cows up to the fort; so just before we was ready for supper, I took Paul and started to see if we couldn't get some milk for our coffee. It wasn't far, and we was camped a few hundred yards from the gate, just outside the wall. Well, we went into the kitchen, Paul right alongside of me, and there I seen a white woman leaning over the adobe hearth a cooking--they had always only been squaws before. She naturally looked up to find out who was coming in, and when she seen the kid, all at once she give a scream, dropped the dish-cloth she had in her hand, made a break for Paul, throw'd her arms around him, nigh upsetting me, and says, while she was a sobbing and taking on dreadful,-- "'My boy! My boy! Then I hain't prayed and begged the good Lord all these days and nights for nothing!' Then she kind o' choked again, while Paul, he says, as he hung on to her,-- "'O mamma! O mamma! I know'd you'd come back! I know'd you'd come back!'