One reason for doing all I could to facilitate the immediate departure of the Californians was that my men were anxious to move into the cabins at once.
With my first glance at the encampment, it had seemed to me too open to surprise. The adjacent forest-clad point crept up near the left flank, offering an effectual screen to an attacking party, and the overlooking sentinel at the guard-house did not have a range of vision to the rear of more than fifty yards. He was not on the summit of the ridge by at least half that distance, and walked along the side of the guard-house next the cabins. He could see nothing of the surface of the valley to the west of the ridge, and when passing along the front of the building, as he paced backward and forward, he saw nothing to the rear of his beat.
I expressed my opinion of the situation to the volunteer captain, but he replied, "Pshaw! you might as well take the sentinel off, for all the good he does as a lookout for Indians."
"Have you seen none?"
"Not a solitary moccasin, except an occasional Pueblo, since I've been here—eleven months."
"I suppose you have scouted the country thoroughly?"
"There isn't a trail within thirty miles that I do not know. These bundles of wolf-skins and other pelts you see going into the wagons are pretty good evidence that my men know the country."
We walked to the kitchen, and found, hanging on the walls of the store-room, a dozen quarters of venison, the fat carcass of a bear, and several bunches of fowl.
"We are not obliged to kill our cattle to supply the men with meat," added the captain. "We butcher only when we need a change from wild meat."
"I saw from the edge of the valley where I entered it that you have deer."