knowing nothing of what was going on, ran away as fast as their
legs could carry them, convinced that their chief must be dead now and
their own safety dependent upon flight. Old Wolf and Hobbs sprang upon
the wall and signalled and shouted to them, and they returned, asking in
great astonishment what kind of a monstrous gun it was.

About noon trading commenced. The Indians wished to come into the fort,
but Bent would not let any enter but the chiefs. At the back door the
colonel displayed his goods, and the Indians brought forward their
ponies, buffalo-robes, deer and other skins, which they traded for
tobacco, beads, calico, flannel, knives, spoons, whistles, jews'-harps,
etc.

Whiskey was sold to them the first day, but as it caused several fights
among them before night, Bent stopped its sale, at Hobbs' suggestion and
with Old Wolf's consent. Indians, when they get drunk, do not waste time
by fighting with fists, like white men, but use knives and tomahawks;
so that a general scrimmage is a serious affair. Two or three deaths
resulted the first day, and there would have been many more if the sale
of whiskey had not been stopped.

The trading continued for eight days, and Colonel Bent reaped a rich
harvest of what he could turn into gold at St. Louis. Old Wolf slept
in the fort each night except one during that time, and every time his
warriors aroused him about twelve o'clock and compelled him to show
himself on the walls to satisfy them of his safety.

About a hundred trappers were in the employ of Bent and his partners.
Sometimes one-half of the company were off on a hunt, leaving but a
small force at the fort for its protection, but with the small battery
there its defence was considered sufficient.

One day a trapping party, consisting of Kit Carson, "Peg-leg" Smith, and
James Hobbs, together with some Shawnee Indians, all under the lead of
Carson, started out from Bent's Fort for the Picketwire to trap beaver.

Grizzlies were very abundant in that region then, and one of the party,
named McIntire, having killed an elk the evening before, said to Hobbs
that they might stand a good chance to find a grizzly by the elk he had
shot but had not brought in. Hobbs said that he was willing to go with
him, but as McIntire was a very green man in the mountains, Hobbs had
some doubts of depending on him in case of an attack by a grizzly bear.

The two men left for the ravine in which McIntire had killed the elk
ver