These words of “Dutch” Jake impressed Oliver deeply, for Jake spoke as if he knew. At any rate, ’twas pleasant to have the reinforcements: to watch their easy figures, to hear their voices, to stroll through their camp and catch their conversation, to note their fringed, beaded clothing, their worn weapons, and their wildly shaggy faces; and to feel their presence, so handy, when in the darkness the fires died and both camps went to sleep. All the next day the march proceeded, southward from the Arkansas, amidst sand hills and sparse vegetation. The trappers from Taos rode in a line along either side of the train, with scouts ahead and out upon the flanks. The men of the train laughed and talked, bantering back and forth. And behind, in the reek of the procession, boy Oliver, ragged and upon his old mule, driving the cavvy, strained eye and ear to keep tab upon what was being done and said. At the noon camp he had opportunity to scan, close by daylight, Kit Carson again. Kit Carson proved to have a square face, rugged and weather-beaten, with sandy moustache, and framed in long brown hair combed smoothly down behind the ears. His cheek-bones were high, somewhat Indian-like, his forehead was high and full, his mouth straight and his chin firm. His most remarkable feature was his eyes――wide apart, level-set, and of an intense steely gray that fairly bored a hole where they looked. His movements were quick and sure; and how he stuck to a horse! Oliver the more believed that “Dutch” Jake and Lieutenant Matthews both knew better than Henry and the other grumblers. Something about Kit Carson said so. Despite the rough joking, the march was an earnest one. No straggling was permitted, to shoot antelope or elk. Yet the day was not uneventful, for once a great brown-bearded man――his beard reaching almost to his belt――who was Solomon Silver, a Carson man, dropping back, rode beside the cavvy until, having good-naturedly eyed Oliver, he joined him, to query, perhaps as a joke: “Wall, boy; what’d ye reckon to do if the Injuns come down sudden?” “I’d fight ’em,” said Oliver, bravely. “Here’s my pistol. See?” “Haw! Haw!” boomed Sol Silver the trapper, in a rousing laugh; and behind his beard he chuckled. “That’s right, boy. Let’s see that shooting-iron o’ yorn,” and he laid it in the palm of his scarred hand. “No use o’ Kit an’ us a-riding the trail, when this air riding it too. I’ll tell him. ’Spec’ if you shoot an Injun with this, son, an’ he gets to find out, he’d be powerful mad at ye! But thar, boy; do yore best. Hyar’s ’nother kind o’ pistol. Ever see one?” And he pulled it from his buffalo-hide belt. “No,” confessed Oliver. It was an odd-looking pistol, with long barrel and a round bulge between barrel and stock.