The others in the party (which numbered about forty) had unsaddled like lightning, had turned their horses out, under a guard, and starting fires or gnawing strips of jerked meat were making their own camp near at hand. Darkly tanned, long-haired, broad-shouldered men were they, the majority heavily bearded. They moved lithely in moccasins, their buckskin suits were patched and stained, they scarcely stirred without rifle in hollow of arm, their belts bore pistol or pair of pistols, and knife; their talk was a curious jargon, but very expressive, and they themselves were exceedingly business-like. But the wonderful Kit Carson, famous hunter and Indian fighter――was that really he? Of course, everybody on the Santa Fé Trail knew about Kit Carson, the free-trapper and captain of trappers, who as merely a boy had made such a name for himself in the mountains and who recently had come out of them, to live at Fernandez de Taos and to supply meat for Bent’s Fort, north. Ere leaving the Missouri frontier little Oliver had heard of Kit Carson as though he were ten feet tall and four feet wide, and bore a pine-tree for a club; but now little Oliver beheld an ordinary-looking person, not much taller than himself and not nearly so tall as many of the other trappers; with wiry body, bandy legs, flat features, and a voice so ridiculously low that his present conversation with Captain Blunt did not carry beyond the camp-fire light. Murmured comment by teamsters, here and there among the wagons, showed to Oliver that he was not alone in his disappointment. “That’s Kit Carson, is it?” “That leetle feller, with the captain yon?” “Wall, naow, I thought Kit Carson war some punkins!” “A big Injun’s liable to pick him right up!” “Whar’s his whiskers?” But Dan Matthews, Captain Blunt’s first lieutenant, came hurrying, from point to point in the circle. “Turn out your critters, men; and you guards post yourselves as before. Lively. There’s likely no danger to-night, Carson says; but keep your eyes and ears open, jest the same.” “Is that thar reely Kit Carson――that leetle chap?” queried Teamster Henry, as the camp bustled to resume its routine. “Yes.” Henry grunted. “Wall, he’s the smallest pea for the amount of pod ever _I_ see!” “Don’t you be fooled, Henry,” retorted Lieutenant Matthews. “You wait a bit, and if you don’t find that he’s got the biggest _do_ for the size of his _tell_ that ever you ran across, I’ll eat my hat.” “That’s right,” affirmed “Dutch” Jake, overhearing. “Brag’s a good dog but he won’t fight; an’ you mustn’t jedge a race-hoss by the color of his hide. You’re seeing one Kit Carson, a gentle-speaking, mild-appearing, sort o’ nincompoop who you might think didn’t know beans. But there’s another Kit Carson, half hoss an’ half alligator, as they say on the Mississippi, or half grizzly b’ar an’ half charging elk, as _I_ say; an’ I reckon you’ll see him, too, ’fore we’re through Injun country.”