At a short distance from the fort there was a saddler, and Mr. Carson, with the advice of friends, decided to apprentice his son, now called Kit, to learn that trade.  The boy remained in this employment for two weary years.  Though faithful to every duty, and gaining the respect and confidence of his employer, the work was uncongenial to him.  He longed for the freedom of the wilderness; for the sublime scenes of nature, to which such a life would introduce him; for the exciting chase of the buffalo, and the lucrative pursuits of the trapper, floating on distant streams in the birch canoe, and loading his bark with rich furs, which ever commanded a ready sale.

All these little settlements were clustered around some protecting fort.  A man, who was brought up in the remote West, furnishes the following interesting incident in his own personal experience.  It gives a very graphic description of the alarms to which these pioneers were exposed: 

“The fort to which my father belonged was three-quarters of a mile from his farm.  But when this fort went to decay and was unfit for use, a new one was built near our own house.  I well remember, when a little boy, the family were sometimes waked up in the dead of night by an express, with the report that the Indians were at hand.  The express came softly to the door and by a gentle tapping raised the family.  This was easily done, as an habitual fear made us ever watchful, and sensible to the slightest alarm.  The whole family were instantly in motion.

“My father seized his gun and other implements of war.  My mother waked up and dressed the children as well as she could.  Being myself the oldest of the children, I had to take my share of the burdens to be carried to the fort.  There was no possibility of getting a horse in the night to aid us.  Besides the little children we caught up such articles of clothing and provisions as we could get hold of in the dark, for we durst not light a candle or even stir the fire.  All this was done with the utmost dispatch and in the silence of death.  The greatest care was taken not to awaken the youngest child.

“To the rest it was enough to say Indian, and not a whisper was heard afterward.  Thus it often happened that the whole number belonging to a fort, who were in the evening at their homes, were all in their little fortress before the dawn of the next morning.  In the course of the next day their household furniture was brought in by men under arms.  Some families belonging to each fort were much less under the influence of fear than others.  These often, after an alarm had subsided, in spite of every remonstrance, would remove home, while their more prudent neighbors remained in the fort.  Such families were denominated fool-hardy, and gave no small amount of trouble by creating such frequent necessities of sending runners to warn them of their danger, and sometimes parties of our men to protect them during their removal.”