TRAIL OF INDIAN PONY TRACKS--DESPERATE ENCOUNTER--HARD TO MAKE THE
SCOUTS BELIEVE HIS STORY.
One of the most daring acts in the history of this daring man was
committed in Western Nebraska in 1866. From boyhood days, he had been
noted as a hunter, and during the years which he spent in the scouting
service, his splendid marksmanship and extraordinary achievements
in the pursuit of game earned for him the reputation of being the
best hunter west of the Missouri River. His success in that line was
phenomenal and elicited expressions of surprise from all who had a
knowledge of his work, and from those who were told of it.
Killing buffalo was not regarded by Creede, or by any of the hunters,
as the best evidence of skill in marksmanship or in hunting. Any one
who could ride a horse and fire a rifle or revolver could kill those
clumsy, shaggy animals much easier than they could pursue and kill the
ordinary steers on the western ranges to-day. In fact, the range steer
is a far more dangerous animal when enraged than was the buffalo, for
it possesses greater activity, and is more fleet of foot. The men who
have gained notoriety on account of the number of buffalo they have
killed are looked upon with quiet contempt by the true hunters of the
plains and mountains, who justly claim that hunting excellence can
only be shown in the still hunt, where tact and skill are required to
approach within shooting distance of the elk, deer or antelope, and
proficient marksmanship is necessary to kill it. When buffalo were
plenty on the western plains, it was not at all unusual for women to
ride after and kill them, and incur little, if any, risk of personal
danger. Miss Emma Woodruff, a school teacher on Wood River in the
sixties, and who afterwards married a telegraph operator at Wood River
Station, became quite noted as a buffalo hunter, and regarded it but as
an ordinary achievement to mount her pony and kill one of the shaggy
monsters. The long-haired showmen who infest the country and tell
thrilling stories of their desperate adventures and narrow escapes
while hunting the buffalo, draw largely upon their imagination for bait
to throw out to the gullible. No one in a dozen of them ever reached
the west bank of the Missouri River. Every frontier man will agree that
the so-called scouts, cowboys and Indian fighters who pose in dime
museums, dime novels or behind theatrical foot-lights, are in nearly
every instance the most shameless frauds, whose long hair and unlimited
“gall” make them heroes in unexperienced eyes. Since the death of Kit
Carson, but one long-haired man has earned a reputation as a scout,
and while he was once, for a brief season, allured into the dramatic
business, and now gives platform entertainments when his duties will
permit him to do so, he is not a showman, but is yet in Government
employ. He is a trusted secret agent of the Department of Justice,
and is engaged in a calling almost as dangerous as was his scouting
service--that of running down the desperate men who are engaged in
selling liquor to Indians. Long hair is the exception and not the rule
among scouts, and a cowboy who permits his locks to cluster over his
shoulders is laughed at by his fellow knights of the saddle and classed
as a crank.
You shall read this story as it fell from Creede’s own lips when I
pressed him to tell it to me. It was this incident which first gained
from him the full confidence and unstinted admiration of the Indian
scouts:
“Game, through some cause, was very scarce near our camp, and one day I
saddled my favorite horse and rode southward, determined to get meat of
some kind before returning. I went about fifteen miles from camp, and
after hunting some four or five hours without success, made up my mind
the game had all left the country. I started to return by a circuitous
route, desiring to cover as large a scope of country as possible, and
get some meat if it was at all to be found. After traveling perhaps
an hour through the sand-hills, I came upon a fresh trail of pony
tracks, and I knew the tracks were made by Indian ponies, and hostile
Indians, too, for none of our scouts were away from camp. I determined
to follow the trail and ascertain if the ponies all bore riders, and,
if possible, to get close enough unobserved to see from the appearance
of the Indians who they were, and if it was a hunting or war party.
They were headed in the direction in which I desired to go, and after
tightening up my saddle cinches and looking to see if my pistols were
in order, I took the trail. I judged from the trail that there were
about twenty-five or thirty Indians in the party, and I soon learned
that my estimate was a nearly correct one.
[Illustration]
“When I reached the top of the first little hill ahead of me, I came
in full view of the party not more than a quarter of a mile distant.
They saw me at the same time, as I knew from the confusion in their
ranks. I tell you, in a case of that kind, one wants to do some quick
thinking, and if ever a man jogged his brain for a scheme to get out
of an ugly scrape, I did right then and there. If I tried to run, I
knew they would scatter and get me, and in less time than it takes me
to tell it, I had made my plan and started to put it into execution.
I saw that my only chance, though a desperate one, would be to make
them believe I was ahead of a party in their pursuit, and taking off my
hat, I made frantic motions to the rear, as if hurrying up a body of
troops, and then, putting spurs to my horse, dashed right toward them,
and when close enough, began firing at them with my rifle. The scheme
worked beautifully, for without firing a shot, they seemed to become
terror-stricken and fled on through the hills. The course lay through
low sand-hills which often concealed them from view, but I pressed on,
firing at every chance. I chased them for fully three miles; two of
them died and I captured three ponies which fell behind, and then left
the trail and made for camp. I found it hard to make the scouts believe
my story, and some of them quite plainly hinted that I had found the
ponies in the hills and had seen no Indians. I saw at once that they
doubted me, and determined to convince them of the truth of what I had
told them. The next morning I took a dozen or more of them and went
back to the scene of the chase, and we were not long in finding all the
coyotes had left of the two bodies.
“That affair firmly established my reputation with the scouts, and ever
after they fully relied on my judgment as a war chief. Through all our
future operations, they trusted me implicitly, and would follow me any
place I chose to lead them.”