human
--their universal word for selling or trading. Then we started to overtake the rest, but they had passed out of view in the deepening twilight, and though we hallooed to them could get no answer--the hubbub of the village evidently drowning our voices. Emerging from the wigwams, we soon discovered, that neither of us had taken any proper notes of the landmarks, as we came over, being busy talking with the rest, and consequently neither knew the way back. Here was a pretty predicament, surely, for two ambitious young men--cast away in a village of a thousand savages, unable to speak a sentence of their language intelligibly or they ours, night already come, and no hint of how to extricate ourselves. To make it doubly absurd, we presently discovered, that our only belligerent weapons, whether for offence or defence, consisted of a Rogers' penknife apiece. We had been so remiss, as to leave camp without our revolvers--a precaution that no Mountain or Plains-man ever neglects. While pondering the
gpt
we luckily caught sight of the Sierra Blanca glistening in the moonlight, and as we knew this to be southeast of our camp we concluded our route lay toward it. We set off accordingly, and had made perhaps a quarter of a mile, across sloughs now dry and through the rank grass, when one of us suggested, that we could not be going right, or our camp-fires would appear. This seemed reasonable, the country was so level; so a halt was ordered, while we scanned the horizon for fires elsewhere. Presently far away to the left, we descried a fire blazing loftily up, and concluded this must be ours, and that our comrades had put on extra fuel to guide us the better home. The direction seemed wrong, judging by the position of the Sierra Blanca; but as it was the only fire visible, except those at the Indian village, we concluded it must be ours, and changing our course struck for it accordingly. A trudge of a mile or more, with an occasional tumble into a dry slough, at length brought us to the fire, when to our disappointment we found it to be only the camp-fire of two rough-looking customers, who said they were out
human
for mines. They said they had reached there just at nightfall, from a long trip through the Mountains, and as yet had seen nothing of our camp, and of course knew nothing of its whereabouts. Two Utes were squatted before the fire, who they said had just rode over from the village, and we asked one of the men, who had been talking with them in Mexican, to inquire the way to
gpt
Kit Carson's Camp for us. He did so, and the Indians jumping up responded, they would conduct us there. We thought now we were in luck, surely, and thanking the miners for their kindness prepared to follow our copper-colored friends. Unloosing a little pony, that was picketed near by, they both clambered upon him, and then with grunts and mutterings to each other, of which we only understood an occasional
human
God dam,