The great Kit Carson did not seem to think much of Oliver, after landing him in Taos. He gave him a place to sleep and a place at table; but he did not send him out to trap beaver, or hunt buffalo, or rescue traders. He put him upon the shabby mule, and set him at his old job of tending a horse-herd. “It’s this way, boy,” consoled Sol Silver, when Oliver would complain. “You do well what’s yores to be done, an’ chance at more will come.” The extra horses and mules belonging to the Kit Carson company were pastured in the open on the outskirts of town. Every morning they must be driven out to graze, and every evening they must be brought back to the corral. It was Oliver’s business to drive them out and to drive them back――which he did with many shouts and much rope-waving and gallant racing by his ancient mule. Thus for a year he was the official herder for the Carson company. The Carson men came and went. Oliver heard their stories, of stirring deeds by themselves or by Bill Williams, Jim Bridger, Captain Billy Sublette, and others; and by Kit Carson. On the other hand, he never heard “Kit” (as his friends lovingly called him) make much mention of himself in any adventures; somebody else always was the hero. When home in Taos Kit played much with his swarthy little daughter, Adaline. Just what to do with her appeared to bother him. Oliver once noted him saying, in his soft voice, with broad accent of the South and the border mingled: “I war raised without schooling; then I ran away an’ I war twelve years on the trail an’ in the mountains ’fore I came out to Bent’s an’ to Taos again. Now I’m thirty-two, an’ without any education ’cept trapper education. ’Tisn’t human for a man not to be able to read or write; an’ what I’m to do with my leetle gal I don’t know. But I want her to have education.” This seemed to Oliver rather a queer idea from the great Kit Carson, who could shoot and ride and trail and talk Indian talk and make Indian sign, besides speaking a rude Spanish and some French. Why should such a man care to read and write, or wish that his children should read and write? But Kit Carson had been much in earnest, nevertheless. Now was it the late fall of 1841, and Oliver still was the official herder for the Carson company. However, he had grown very much during these twelve months in the fresh air, riding and tramping and doing man’s work. Tough of muscle and sturdy of frame, he was becoming full-chested like Kit Carson himself. But he could not yet be called a trapper. The men were kind to him; he liked them; he stood their joking and their rough ways, and tried to do what they told him was best to do. So they apparently liked him, in turn, and would teach him how to shoot quick and straight, and to ride easily and surely.