ELDORADO 79 



chips, having no way to dig a grave. It was only ? 

 few days before this fight that some of these same 

 Indians had come into our camp, and although we had 

 only meat for two days and felt sure that we should 

 have to eat mules for 10 or 15 days to come, the Colo- 

 nel divided with th.em and even had a mule unpacked 

 to give them some tobacco and knives." 



Two days later, as the party retraced their way into 

 California in response to orders from Washington that 

 reached them by Lieutenant Gillespie, they came to a 

 village of more than a hundred Klamath warriors. In 

 the encounter which followed, Carson's life was con- 

 tinually exposed. As they galloped up he was in the 

 advance, when he observed an Indian fixing his arrow 

 to let flv at him. Carson leveled his rifle, but it snap- 

 ped, and in an instant the arrow wovild have pierced 

 him had not Fremont, seeing the danger, dashed his 

 horse on the Indian and knocked him down. "I owe 

 my life," said Carson, "to those two — the Colonel and 

 his horse, 'Sacramento.' " Sacramento was a noble 

 California horse which Captain Sutter gave to Colonel 

 Fremont in 1844, and which twice made the distance 

 between Kentucky and the Sacramento vallev, where 

 he earned his name by swimming the river after which 

 he was called, at the close of a long day's journey. 



