“If you want to, an’ if Kit decides so. We take the Touse trail in the morning. Now, if you’re to come, thar’ll be a fire made at the foot o’ that thar cottonwood, standing out alone. See it? Wall, if you see the flare, pretty soon, you’ll know. But you’ll lose yore wages from the caravan. They’ll not pay ye less you go through to Santy Fee with ’em.” “I don’t care,” stammered Oliver. “I’d rather go to Touse, with you. Can I be a Kit Carson man?” “Reckon you can, some time, if you got it in you; an’ if Kit thinks you have, you have. All right; don’t say anything, an’ watch for the fire.” Sol rode back to his mates. Oliver watched anxiously. Hurrah, the fire flared, just as he was trudging to supper. And when, in the morning, caravan and trappers parted company, into the west on the Taos trail rode with the Kit Carson men little Oliver Wiggins. III OLIVER WINS HIS SPURS That evening, with clatter of hoof and volley of victorious whoops and rifle-shots, amidst the sunset they galloped into the New Mexican village of Don Fernandez de Taos, sixty miles west from where they had parted with the Santa Fé bound caravan. Taos, or “old Touse,” as it was affectionately styled, lies in a mountain valley eighty miles north of Santa Fé. Here had his home and headquarters Kit Carson, captain over his company of forty-five trappers. He lived in one of the box-like clay houses, with his little daughter Adaline. Adaline, four years old, was a dark, elfish lass, half Indian; for her mother, Kit Carson’s wife, had been an Arapahoe. Kit had married this Arapahoe in the mountains, in the summer of 1835, but she had died soon after the birth of little Adaline. “Kit thought a heap o’ Alice,” declared Sol Silver, to Oliver. “Some trappers jest take a squaw as cook an’ lodge cleaner, an’ all that. But Kit air true man. He named his squaw Alice, an’ when she died he felt mighty bad. He’s got that gal to raise, now.” The Kit Carson company of trappers were divided into two bands, under Lieutenant Ike Chamberlain and Lieutenant Sol Silver. They took turns going upon excursions after beaver――or sometimes they all were out together. Besides the beaver-hunting, there was the buffalo-hunting for Bent’s Fort. Northeast of Taos, 250 and more miles, upon the Arkansas River in southern Colorado of to-day, was the large clay-built trading-post of Bent’s Fort, or Fort William, its hardy garrison trafficking with 20,000 wild Cheyennes, Utes, and Arapahoes. Kit Carson had the contract for supplying the garrison with meat. So twice a year, in spring and in fall, the Carson men gathered at Bent’s Fort, for a great buffalo-hunt. Into the fort were brought thousands of pounds of buffalo-meat.