“Do I have to go, Kit?”
“Whar, boy?”
“Back, with Ike and the rest.”
“Reckon you’d better. Times air liable to be hard on the trail, an’ we’re bound through to Vancouver.”
“But I want to stay, Kit. I’ll feed myself—I’ll do my own foraging—I’d just as soon eat roots, I like ’em. I want to stay, with you and Lieutenant Frémont—and sail on the lake—and go to the coast. I’m not afraid.”
“Not afraid to explore that ’ere lake in that rubber contraption, an’ get swallowed by a whirlpool, mebbe?”
“No,” declared Oliver, stanchly.
“Wall,” smiled Kit Carson, his clear gray-blue eyes twinkling, “if Ike an’ the rest should happen to ride off an’ you shouldn’t be with ’em, I s’pose we’d have to keep you, best we could. You’ve got yore dog, to eat.”
To the wise a word is sufficient. Ike and William New and all the Carson squad swiftly packed, to take the trail. The Frémont men cast sidelong glance as they proceeded with their own duties, and some, amidst the bantering, hinted that they would like to go, too. But they were under orders: enlisted for this United States Army service. The Taos men were free trappers, enlisted not at all.
“Ready, boy?” called William New, to Oliver.