While Kit Carson was impatiently at work on the bench of the harness-maker, feeding his soul with the stories, often greatly exaggerated, of the wonders of scenes and adventures to be encountered in the boundless West, a party of traders came along, who were on the route for Santa Fe.  This city, renowned in the annals of the West, was the capital of the Spanish province of New Mexico.  It was situated more than a thousand miles from Missouri, and contained a mongrel population of about three thousand souls.  Goods from the States could be readily sold there at a profit of one or two hundred per cent.  Cotton cloth brought three dollars a yard.

Captain Pike, upon his return from his exploring tour, brought back quite glowing accounts of Santa Fe and its surroundings.  It was a long and perilous journey from Missouri.  The party was all strongly armed, with their goods borne in packs upon mules and horses.  They expected to live almost entirely upon the game they could shoot by the way.  Kit, purely from the love of adventure, applied to join them.  Gladly was he received.  Though but a boy of eighteen, his stable character, his vigorous strength, and his training in all the mysteries of frontier life, rendered him an invaluable acquisition.

The perils to which they were exposed may be inferred from the fate which some traders encountered soon after Kit Carson’s party had accomplished the journey.  There were twelve traders returning from Santa Fe.  To avoid the Indians they took an extreme southern route.  Day after day they toiled along, encountering no savages.  It was December, and in that climate mild and serene.  A caravan of twenty horses or mules travelling in single file, leaves a trail behind which can easily be followed.

Our adventurers were on a treeless prairie, an ocean of land, where nothing obstructed the view to the remote horizon.  One beautiful morning, just after they had taken their breakfast and resumed their march, they perceived, not a little to their alarm, some moving object far in the distance behind.  It soon resolved itself into a band of several hundred Indians, well mounted, painted and decorated in the highest style of barbaric art.  They were thoroughly armed with their deadly bows and arrows and spears.  It was indeed an imposing spectacle as these savage warriors on their fleet steeds, with their long hair and pennons streaming in the wind, came down upon them.

The little caravan halted and prepared for defence.  There were twelve bold hearts to encounter several hundred foes on the open prairie.  They knew that the main object of the Indians would be to seize the horses and mules and effect a stampede with their treasure.  This being accomplished they would torture and murder the traders in mere wantonness.  The savages had a very salutary caution of rifles which could throw a bullet twice as far as the strongest bow and the most sinewy arm could speed an arrow.