We found more furs and robes there awaiting
our arrival than we could load on our horses. In all we made four
trips that winter, and Col. Bent told me some time afterward that
they cleared a thousand dollars on each cargo.
When spring came Jim Bridger and I went to Taos and visited Uncle
Kit for about a month.
This was now the spring of 1859 and the excitement over the gold
mines around Pike's Peak was running high. We all knew where
Pike's Peak was, for any day when it was clear we could see it
very plainly from Bent's Fort or Taos, but we did not know just
where the mines were. Jim proposed that we take a trip out there
and see about the mines. So we talked the matter over until I was
finally attacked with that disease which was then known as "the
gold fever."
About the first of June we made a break for the gold fields. We
crossed the Arkansas river near Fountain ca-booyah (or something
like that)--(Fountain qui Bouille, Boiling Fountain)--and did not
go far from there until we struck a wagon road, which showed there
had been much travel, and we could see that it had not been long
since a wagon passed.
We were very much surprised at a wagon road in this portion of
country, but there it was just the same. We did not travel on this
road very far until we overtook a large train of emigrants, and on
making inquiry we learned that they were on their way to Pike's
Peak.
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