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Updated: June 9, 2025
I answered, "No sir, I would much prefer to handle the Indians by myself than to have a crowd with me." I then said, "Col., you have the control of this train. Why don't you make a contract with Col. Bent and Mr. Roubidoux to load the train with Buffalo robes to freight back to the Missouri river? I believe that if you could do so, it would nearly if not quite pay the expense of the whole trip."
Jim Bridger said to me in our own language: "If we had not had those young Kiowas with us by this time we would have been in a hurry, too." These were the last Sioux we saw on the whole trip. When we returned to the fort and reported our troubles to Col. Bent and Mr. Roubidoux, they felt very bad over the loss of the Mexican boy, Hasa, but they complimented us on the way we had managed.
Roubidoux told the Colonel to pay us twenty dollars each, extra, all of which was agreeable to us, and they engaged us to hunt for them the next summer at seventy-five dollars per month. We returned now to Taos to prepare for the winter's trapping.
Up to this time the Kiowa had not traded any at this fort. In fact, there had been but little trading done among them, yet they were in the heart of the buffalo country in the fall of the year, being located on the Arkansas river, one hundred miles west from the Big Bend. We made a bargain to work for Bent and Roubidoux by the month, they to furnish us.
Roubidoux that I will be at Bent's Fort as soon as I finish this job and can get there, and that if they want me to go and trade with the Comanches, I have everything cut and dried for business, for I have visited all the main villages on this trip, and the Indians are expecting to see me back in four months to trade with them."
On arriving at Bent's Fort we learned that furs were high, and notwithstanding our catch was light, Uncle Kit did fairly well. He sold his furs again to Col. Bent and Mr. Roubidoux. After Uncle Kit had settled up with all the other boys, he called me into the tent and said: "Willie, I have settled with all the men now but you; how much am I owing you?"
Roubidoux and his son, and a man named James Bridger, of whom you will see a great deal, later on in this narrative. These men were all traders, buying furs and buffalo robes from Indians, white hunters and trappers.
Roubidoux proposed to hire Johnnie West and I to hunt for them for two months, saying that they had not had fresh meat half of the time the past spring. We agreed to work for them for two months, they being willing to pay us fifty dollars each per month, with the understanding that in case we kept them in meat all summer they would pay us extra wages.
Roubidoux to go among the Arapahoe Indians to trade for furs and buffalo robes. Uncle Kit Carson pulled out for home and when he was starting he said he had done his last trapping and he was going home to his sheep ranch and take things easy. "For," said he, "I had the wust luck last winter that I ever had in my life, when I had 'lowed to have the best. I'm gittin old enough to quit."
Bent and Mr. Roubidoux would have all of their money back for grub and whiskey, and, in fact, many of them would be in debt to them. There being so much stock around the Fort the game was driven back so far that it became necessary to go considerable distance to get any. Col. Bent and Mr.
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