The company of trappers which had been so fortunate as to secure the services of Kit Carson, for facts seem now to warrant us in employing this language of just praise, set out for the Yellow Stone River, which stream they safely reached, and on which they set their traps. Dame Fortune here seemed to be in unpleasant mood. Crossing the country from the Yellow Stone to the Big Horn River, they again courted the old lady's smile with stoical patience, but with no better results. They next extended their efforts to the three forks of the Missouri River; also, to the Big Snake River. The fickle old lady proved scornful on all these streams, and finally, on the latter stream and its tributaries they wintered.
In this section of the country they fell in with Mr. Thomas McCoy, a trader who was in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company. In his trading operations Mr. McCoy had been unsuccessful and had concluded to organize a trapping expedition. The inducements which he held out led Kit Carson and five of his companions to become members of his party. With him they traveled to Mary's River,[10] from whence reports had circulated that beaver existed in great abundance. The party struck upon this stream high up and slowly followed it down to where it is lost in the Great Basin. Their success here was not satisfactory; consequently, the party returned to the Big Snake River. By McCoy's direction the party tarried upon this river for some time when it was divided. McCoy and a small escort started for Fort Walla Walla. Kit Carson and the majority of the men took up their line of march for Fort Hall. While en route, the latter division was subjected to the greatest privations imaginable. Among the worst of these was hunger, as their trail led through a barren region of country. For a short time, they managed to subsist upon a small supply of nutritious roots which had been provided in advance. This source finally gave out, when their affairs assumed a most desperate attitude. To keep from starving, they bled their mules and drank the warm red blood with avidity, so acutely had the days of fasting sharpened their appetites. This operation, however could not be repeated without endangering the lives of their animals. These also were on a short allowance of food, for the grass was very poor and scanty. The whole party had become frightfully reduced in strength, and began to think it necessary to kill some of their animals, which at this time they could but ill spare. In this terrible condition they met with a band of Indians who proved to be of a friendly disposition. The party was then only about four days' journey from Fort Hall. Most unhappily, the Indians themselves possessed but a scanty supply of provisions, and no more than their immediate wants required. It was not without considerable manœuvering and talk, during which all the skill and Indian experience possessed by Kit Carson were brought into active requisition, that the savages were prevailed upon to trade with the trappers. By the trade the half famished men obtained a fat horse, which was immediately killed, and on which they regaled with as much relish as the epicure in the settlements enjoys his "joint of roast beef."
To a man not accustomed to this kind of meat, mule flesh and horse flesh would not be likely to prove over tempting or appropriate viands. Let him feel the pangs of hunger very sharply, and his ideas of lusciousness and propriety in respect to food will rapidly change. The civilized world has condemned the practice as belonging to barbarians. A mountaineer, not being quite so fastidious, scouts these ideas, considering them foolish prejudices of people who have never been forced by necessity to test the wisdom of their condemnation. Let the epicurean sages have their choice, eat horse flesh or starve, and, they confidently maintain, horse flesh would gradually grow to be considered a dainty, the rarer over beef, in proportion to its greater cost.
The trappers of the western prairies, who wander thousands of miles over barren as well as fertile lands, where game cannot exist from stern necessity, are compelled to submit to all kinds of vicissitudes; but, with buoyant spirits, they conquer results, which, a faint heart and yielding courage would behold almost in their grasp but fail to reach.
An emergency calls forth skill and great energies; and, in an unexplored country where, as in the case here recorded, everything living suddenly disappears, it is then that the wits of a trapper save his life when an ordinary traveler would lie down and die.
Kit Carson and his men, at last, succeeded in reaching Fort Hall. They were kindly received and amply provided for by the whites who then occupied it as a trading post. Here they rapidly recruited their strength, and in the course of a few days felt able to start out upon a buffalo hunt. Reports had come in that large numbers of buffalo existed in close proximity to the Fort. Kit Carson and his men were not the kind who live upon the bounty of others when game can be had in return for the necessary effort to find. They were also not the men to hoard their stock of provisions whenever they met parties in distress. The first query which different bands of trappers offer to each other on meeting in the wilderness, is, "Does game exist in plenty," or "is game plenty in such and such sections of country?" This takes precedence over the commonplace question, "What's the news?" Oftentimes, when venturing into distant and unexplored districts of territory they were obliged to take their chances of finding sustenance; but, they hardly ever neglected an opportunity to inform themselves on the subject: on the contrary, they often sacrificed both time and profits in order to secure correct details. Any other course would have been fool-hardy rashness, just fit for parties of over-bold inexperience to take the consequences of.
Hunting the buffalo is a manly and interesting sport; and, as Kit Carson on this occasion engaged in it with successful results, it might be interesting to the general reader, and, in this place the unity of the narrative seems to require, a complete and practical description of the manner of taking the buffalo. We have, however deferred this part of our duty to an occasion when Kit Carson had his friend John C. Fremont upon his first buffalo hunt. We shall then permit the bold Explorer to tell the story of a buffalo hunt in our behalf.[11]