er or to a marsh.

He was alone, but he had never known fear. He was the most determined
adventurer who had ever passed the Rocky Mountains, and, if but half of
what is said of him is true, his dangerous travels and his hairbreadth
escapes would fill many volumes more interesting and romantic than the
best pages of the American novelist. Poor man after having during so
many years escaped from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, he was
fated to fall under the tomahawk, and his bones to blench upon the
desert sands.

He was about twelve miles front his comrades, when, turning round a
small hill, he perceived the long-sought object of his wishes. A small
stream glided smoothly in the middle of the prairie before him. It was
the river Cimaron. He hurried forward to moisten his parched lips, but
just as he was stooping over the water he fell, pierced by ten arrows.
A band of Comanches had espied him, and waited there for him. Yet he
struggled bravely. The Indians have since acknowledged that, wounded as
he was, before dying, Captain Smith had killed three of their people.

Such was the origin of the Santa Fe trade, and such are the liabilities
which are incurred even now, in the great solitudes of the West.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Time passed away, till I and my companions were heartily tired of our
inactivity: besides, I was home-sick, and I had left articles of great
value at the settlement, about which I was rather fidgety. So one day
we determined that we would start alone, and return to the settlement by
a different road. We left Santa Fe and rode towards the north, and it
was not until we had passed Taos, the last Mexican settlement, that we
became ourselves again and recovered our good spirits. Gabriel knew the
road; our number was too small not to find plenty to eat, and as to the
hostile Indians, it was a chance we were willing enough to encounter. A
few days after we had quitted Santa Fe, and when in the neighbourhood of
the Spanish Peaks, and about thirty degrees north latitude, we fell in
with a numerous party of the Comanches.

It was the first time we had seen them in a body, and it was a grand
sight. Gallant horsemen they were, and well mounted. They were out
upon an expedition against the Pawnee (see Note one) Loups, and they
behaved to us with the greatest kindness and hospitality. The chief
knew Gabriel, and invited us to go in company with them to their place
of encampment. The chie