“That’s exactly where I met one. Did you kill it?”
“I think so,” replied Kit Carson quietly. “The beast crept up behind me and I had all I could do to keep my pony from running away with me.”
“That’s exactly what happened to me. I don’t see how you shot him.”
“I think it must have been pure luck. I got the pony quiet for a minute and turned around and fired at the beast when it was not more than ten or twelve feet away. A blind man couldn’t have missed it.”
Reuben had his own thoughts as to the truthfulness of the modest declaration, but he did not give expression to them. In response to the questions of the scout, he modestly related the incident which had befallen him in his own journey in the same region.
“You were a lucky lad,” said Kit Carson warmly. “And you couldn’t have acted better if you had been sixty-one instead of sixteen. You never had seen one before, had you?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand yet why it was that you didn’t put your pony into a run and try to escape. It was lucky for you that you didn’t, for if you had tried it the beast would have got you as sure as fate.”
“I had heard Jean tell about the lions, and all that he had said flashed into my mind in a minute. And I saw a man at San Gabriel that looked so much like Jean that I was almost sure that it was he.”
“Are you sure that he wasn’t?”