On arriving once more at Santa Fe, he fell in with Col.  Tramell, who was at that time a well-known trader.  Col Tramell needed a Spanish interpreter.  Kit obtained the post, and set out with him for Chihuahua, one of the Mexican States.  Here again Kit made a change in his employment.  In Chihuahua he fell in with Mr. Robert McKnight.  To him he hired out as a teamster, and in this capacity went to the copper mines which are found near to the Rio Gila.  Amid the weary necessities of this humble but honorable calling, Kit’s heart was constantly alive with ambition to become a hunter and trapper.  He knew that he was expert with the rifle, which had been his boyish toy, and felt confident that he could rely upon it as an assistant to gain an honest living.  His constant thought at this time was, let him now be engaged in whatever calling chance offered and necessity caused him to accept, the final pursuit of his life would be as a hunter and trapper.  Here, then, is presented a fair example of the strife, both inward and outward, through which a young man of courage and ambition must expect to pass before he can win position, influence, and the comforts of life, whatever the scene of his action, or whatever the choice of employment suitable to his talent and genius.  Kit Carson was determined, no matter what might be the obstacles which presented themselves, to be a hunter and trapper.

The reader will have made a sad mistake if he has concluded, that during the time which has intervened since Kit started from Missouri, he has been roaming in a country where there was less danger than when he was in the picketed fort with his father.  Such a supposition would be greatly at fault.  The towns in New Mexico, at this early period, were almost entirely at the mercy of the Indians.  The Mexicans were nearly destitute of means to defend themselves.  Very few of the Anglo-Saxon race had entered this territory, and those who had were, in turn, exposed to the vacillating wills of the proverbially treacherous Mexicans.  A man like Kit Carson, however, born and bred in danger, cared but little about this state of affairs.  The dangers did not enter into his calculations of chance to overcome the difficulties which beset the pathway which the alluring hopes of his ambition had marked out.  Not long afterward, he left the copper mines, and once more bent his steps to Taos, in company with a small party.  At Taos, he found a band of trappers which had been sent out by Mr. Ewing Young.  While en route for the river Colorado of the west, in pursuit of game, they had been attacked by a band of Indians.  After fighting an entire day, they had been compelled to retreat, and returned to New Mexico.

CHAPTER II.