Spring was returning with its milder breezes and its warmer sun.  The time for the spring hunt had commenced.  There were no hostile Indians in the vicinity to disturb the trappers.  Success, surpassing their most sanguine expectations, attended their efforts.  Every morning the trappers came in from their various directions laden with furs.  All were elated with their extraordinary prosperity.  There is the spring hunting and the fall hunting.  But there is a period in midsummer when the fur is valueless or cannot easily be taken.  Game was then abundant, camping was a luxury.  This was the time selected by the traders for their Fairs in the wilderness.  Here, as we have mentioned, there was exchange of the commodities needed in mountaineer-life, for the furs the trappers had taken during the autumn, winter and spring.  There was at this time another rendezvous on Green river, where there was to be a renewal of the scenes of the past year.

Kit Carson very speedily recovered from his wounds.  His perfect health and temperate habits caused a cure, which seemed almost miraculous.  As we have mentioned, these mountaineers were beyond the limits of the laws.  There was no governmental protection whatever.  Every man was compelled to be his own protector, filling the threefold office of judge, jury and executioner.

The incident we are about to record would have been highly immoral in any well-ordered community where law was recognized and could be enforced.  And yet the same act occurring in the savage wilderness may have merited the high commendation which it universally received.

There was a fellow at the rendezvous, as the Fair among the mountains was called, known as captain Shunan.  He was of unknown nationality, of very powerful frame, a bully and a braggadocio.  Totally devoid of principle, and conscious of his muscular superiority, he was ever swaggering through the camp, dealing blows and provoking quarrels.  He was universally detested and also feared.  Every one in the camp desired to see him humbled.

One day Shunan was particularly offensive.  That morning he had engaged in two fights, and had knocked down and flogged both of the men whom he had assailed.  The traders had brought whiskey to the rendezvous, and probably whiskey was at the bottom of these troubles.  Mr. Carson was quietly talking with some of his friends, in one part of the extended encampment, when the swaggering bully came along seeking to provoke another fight.  “These Americans,” said he, “are all cowards; they are all women.  I am going into the bush to cut some rods and I’ll switch every one of them.”

Kit Carson immediately stepped forward in his calm, unimpassioned way, and with his soft and almost feminine voice said: 

“Captain Shunan, I am an American and one of the smallest and weakest of them all.  We have no disposition to quarrel with any one.  But this conduct can no longer be endured.  If it is continued, I shall be under the necessity of shooting you.”