y the case.

A horseman shortly joined me and rode with me, got me a fresh horse,
and accompanied me for ten miles. He was a picturesque figure and rode
a very good horse. He wore a big slouch hat, from under which a number
of fair curls hung nearly to his waist. His beard was fair, his eyes
blue, and his complexion ruddy. There was nothing sinister in his
expression, and his manner was respectful and frank. He was dressed in
a hunter's buckskin suit ornamented with beads, and wore a pair of
exceptionally big brass spurs. His saddle was very highly ornamented.
What was unusual was the number of weapons he carried. Besides a rifle
laid across his saddle and a pair of pistols in the holsters, he
carried two revolvers and a knife in his belt, and a carbine slung
behind him. I found him what is termed "good company." He told me a
great deal about the country and its wild animals, with some hunting
adventures, and a great deal about Indians and their cruelty and
treachery. All this time, having crossed South Park, we were ascending
the Continental Divide by what I think is termed the Breckenridge Pass,
on a fairly good wagon road. We stopped at a cabin, where the woman
seemed to know my companion, and, in addition to bread and milk,
produced some venison steaks. We rode on again, and reached the crest
of the Divide (see engraving), and saw snow-born streams starting
within a quarter of a mile from each other, one for the Colorado and
the Pacific, the other for the Platte and the Atlantic. Here I wished
the hunter good-bye, and reluctantly turned north-east. It was not
wise to go up the Divide at all, and it was necessary to do it in
haste. On my way down I spoke to the woman at whose cabin I had dined,
and she said, "I am sure you found Comanche Bill a real gentleman"; and
I then knew that, if she gave me correct information, my intelligent,
courteous companion was one of the most notorious desperadoes of the
Rocky Mountains, and the greatest Indian exterminator on the
frontier--a man whose father and family fell in a massacre at Spirit
Lake by the hands of Indians, who carried away his sister, then a child
of eleven. His life has since been mainly devoted to a search for this
child, and to killing Indians wherever he can find them.

After riding twenty miles, which made the distance for that day fifty,
I remounted Birdie to ride six miles farther, to a house which had been
mentioned to me as a stopping plac