We gathered every thing together and moved it to the ground where we were going to make our winter quarters, and Uncle Kit and Jim selected the place to build our cabin, and the men all turned to and went to chopping the logs and putting up the cabin.  By night the body of the cabin was almost up, but the reader must bear in mind that this was not a very large house.  It was ten feet one way, and twelve the other, with a fire place built in one corner.  They built the walls of the shack seven foot high and then covered it with small poles, covered the poles with fine bows and then there was from six to eight inches of dirt packed on them and the cracks were stuffed with mud.  The door was split out of logs called puncheons and was fastened together with wooden pins, driven into holes, bored with an auger.  This way of building a house to live in through the winter may seem strange to the readers who are accustomed to all the luxuries of the modern home of civilization; but we considered our cabin very good quarters, and we were very comfortable that winter.

The first morning after we were settled in our new home we commenced setting traps for Beaver.  Jim Bridger was the lucky man of the whole outfit in catching Beaver all that winter.  Each man had twelve traps which was called a string, and a number of times that winter Bridger had a beaver in every one of his traps in the morning.  I had watched him set his traps many times and I tried to imitate him in every particular, but I never had the luck he had.

Uncle Kit told me a number of times that winter that it was a good trapper that made an average of catching five Beaver a day, during the trapping season.  We were all very successful this winter.  Beaver was very plentiful, as there had never been any trappers in this part of the country before, and besides that was an exceptional good winter for trapping.  The winter was quite cold, but there was not much snow all winter for that country.  We stayed here and trapped until the very last of March, and when we had the furs all baled and ready for packing we found we did not have horses enough to take them all out at one time, so Uncle Kit and Jim Bridger packed the seven horses and rode the other two and struck out for Bent’s Fort, telling us they would come back as soon as they could make the trip; and to our surprise they were back on the tenth day.

We had everything ready for them to break up camp when they came back, and we had all we could carry the second time.  All of the nine horses were packed, and we all had to walk to Bent’s Fort.

After we left the Platte we took up a stream called Sand Creek which leads to the divide between the Platte and the Arkansas rivers.  After we camped that night Carson said to the boys, “Now we have had a pretty good variety of meat this winter, but we haven’t had any antelope, but we are in the greatest country for antelope in the west now.  Can’t one of you boys kill one tomorrow for supper?  But I am sorry for Jim and Will for Jim can’t get a Beaver’s tail off of it, and there won’t be any bear’s foot for Will to eat.”