Carson was present at the creation, it seemed. He had witnessed the dawn of the American West in all its vividness and brutality. In his constant travels he had caromed off of or intersected with nearly every major tribal group and person of consequence. He had lived in the sweep of the Western experience with a directness few other men could rival.

At first glance, Kit Carson was not much to look at, but that was a curious part of his charm. His bantam physique and modest bumpkin demeanor seemed interestingly at odds with the grandeur of the landscapes he had roamed. He stood only five-fee-four-inches, with stringy brown hair grazing his shoulders. His jaw was clenched and squarish, his eyes a penetrating gray-blue, his mouth set in a tight little downturned construction that looked like a frown of mild disgust. The skin between his eyebrows was pinched in a furrow, as though permanently creased from constant squinting. His forehead rose high and craggy to a swept-back hairline. He had a scar along his left ear, another one on his right shoulder - both left by bullets. He appeared bow-legged from his years in the saddle, and he walked roundly, with a certain ungainliness, as though he were not entirely comfortable as a terrestrial creature, his sense of ease and familiarity of movement tied to his mule.

By early August, Kearny's troops were spread out over hundreds of miles of the Santa Fe Trail, inching forward in scores of separate caravans. Before making the final push into New Mexico, Kearny decided to pause long enough to concentrate his forces on the Arkansas at Bent's Fort, the adobe citadel where Kit Carson had briefly worked as a hunter back in the early 1840s.

Commanding an impressive vantage along the Santa Fe Trail, the fort's high castle tower was equipped with a nautical spyglass for keeping an eye on hostile Indians. Two live bald eagles held vigil from the rooftop, caged in the belfry. Friendly Plains tribes often pitched their tepees nearby to trade and gamble and drink at the fort. Bent's was a loud and bustling agora, its denizens coarse-mannered but usually friendly when not too drunk, its labyrinths of storerooms stacked with beaver pelts and buffalo robes and barrels of Taos lightning, the stout New Mexico whiskey.

When it was good and dark, Carson and the two other volunteers crouched among the rocks and started sliding down Mule Hill. The slopes were composed of loose scree, and they decided their boots were making too much noise on the gravelly descent. Chemuctah was wearing soft moccasins, but Carson and Beale removed their boots and tucked them under their belts. Carson also worried that their canteens were sloshing and clinging too loudly, so they left them behind.

Now barefoot, Carson and Beale cradled their weapons as quietly as they could and slithered through the brush until they came to the first line of sentinels. They crept right under the noses of the Californians, so close the enemy horses must have smelled them. Carson could trace the outline of the Mexican lances, held upright to the starry skies. Several times they felt sure they had been spotted. One sentry rode right over to where the Americans were lying prone among the rocks. For what seemed like an eternity the soldier sat on his horse, producing a flint, then lighting and luxuriously smoking a cigaretto. He seemed to be drawing out the act as though he were teasing them; Beale felt sure the sentry knew they were lying there at his horse's feet. The young naval lieutenant was so scared that Carson later swore he, "could distinctly hear Beale's heart pulsate."

For once, Carson seemed to enjoy the attention. He had come to accept his celebrity and was even a bit amused by it. He had long since given up fighting the fictions of the dime novels. The phenomenon was bigger than he was - why not enjoy it? When offered a copy of a recently published blood and thunder, he put on his spectacles and studied the cover for a minute. It showed an image of Carson with his arm draped around the slender waist of a beautiful buxom girl, surrounded by the corpses of countless freshly killed savages from whose clutches he had just rescued her.

Carson put down the book and said, "Gentlemen, that thar may be true, but I hain't got no recollection of it." And then he winked.