M. V. DAILY,
SOLDIER, INDIAN FIGHTER, BUFFALO-HUNTER, AND HOMESTEADER.
[Illustration: MART DALEY.]
His picture shows the loss of his trigger finger; done by Missouri
bushwhackers. Yet he trained the middle finger to pull trigger, and
told the author, in 1907, that he could shoot just as well as ever.
When the wild plains Indians, armed with lances, bows and arrows,
attacked a stage-coach, in 1865, on the Arkansas river, this man Daily
was driving the six mules drawing the coach, which had sixty arrows
imbedded in it; and a lance that was thrust at him by a big Kiowa, went
between his right arm and body, passing through into the coach. He got
his coach into Larned, and himself unhurt.
He homesteaded in Thomas county, Kansas; hunted buffalo; built sod
houses; broke prairie; went through the drought era; saw the country
nearly depopulated on account of successive failures of crops;
witnessed the change in climatic conditions; the hot winds abate; the
coming of rainfall; and the return of starved-out settlers, bringing
with them people and capital. And to-day the country is well settled
with a happy, prosperous people.
MISCELLANEOUS STORIES
OF
BUFFALO LAND.
STAMPEDE OF THE WHEEL-OXEN.
The month of February, 1875, when I was in the employ of Charles Hart,
skinning buffaloes, I had an experience which was both amusing and
embarrassing.
As we were _en route_ down from the Panhandle of Texas to the Brazos
hunting-grounds, we passed by an abandoned Government wagon. It was
on a sandy stretch of ground between South Pease river and a prong of
the Salt Fork of the Brazos. After we had arrived where we did our
principal hunting that winter and spring, Hadley, the freighter (he
who afterwards proved to be a disappointment) said to me one evening
that he could skin as many buffalo as I could, and that if I would take
his yoke of wheel-oxen, go back and bring in that wagon we had seen on
our way down, he would skin the buffaloes in my stead, and have the
number of hides accredited to me. I told him I would sleep over the
proposition. I went to bed, and reasoned the matter out thus:
That it was not over fifteen miles back to where the wagon was. It had
a good tongue in it. It stood up on four good wheels. When we passed
it it looked as if it had been in that one place as much as a year.
I could make the round trip in two days. Those oxen were large, very
strong, in good flesh, well broken, and perfectly gentle. In view
of all the facts, I decided to make the trip. Accordingly, the next
morning I told Hadley to yoke up his oxen, give me a log-chain and a
box of Frazer's axle-grease, and I would make the trip; would start as
soon as breakfast was over.
I took three blankets and a wagon-sheet and folded them
soldier-fashion, and placed a hatchet and frying-pan on the fold; also
took a bag of salt, some ground coffee, about four pounds of bacon,
three pones of bread, baked in a Dutch oven, a tin cup, a few extra
cartridges; rolled the whole outfit up in the blankets, laid this roll
on top of the yoke between the bows, wrapped the chain around the
bundle, yoke and all; then with a lariat securely bound everything
fast, tied on a coffee-pot, and was off to bring in that abandoned
wagon.
Now there was not a settler's home within eighty miles of the camp I
just left, except what was known as the Mathews Ranch, on California
creek, sixty miles southeast of our camp. The morning being quite
chilly, I wore a heavy short coat. I was leaving camp just as the sun
appeared above the horizon.
As the early forenoon wore away, it became quite warm. I stopped the
oxen, took off my coat, and fastened it to the pack on the yoke.
Starting again, I walked behind the patient, plodding old oxen for an
hour or more, when we approached some breaks. At this time I judged I
was much more than half the distance from camp to where I was going.
Presently the oxen raised their heads, sniffing the air; they turned
a little to the left and increased their speed. I knew at once they
had winded water. I followed after them, but upon going a few rods
farther the oxen broke into a trot, and about the time they did so we
were on the brink of a downward slope, and close to a large pool of
water, just west of us, with a bald low butte on the west side of the
water. As the oxen trotted faster, I decreased my gait to a slow walk.
I saw the oxen rush into the water, belly-deep, stop, and commence
drinking. I was nearly 200 yards behind them. My cartridge-belt was
chafing my hips. I stopped to buckle the belt another hole tighter,
when all at once about 100 buffaloes came thundering down the slope
from the northeast, in a mad rush for the water. Seemingly I was not
noticed at all by them, but before they got fairly into the water the
old "whoa-haws" (as the Indians called oxen) bolted and whirled to the
southwest,—and away they went, out of the water, up the steep slope
which joined onto the butte jutting down to the water. It seemed that
at the same instant the oxen stampeded, the buffalo whirled around
towards a northwest direction; and off they went, up the slope, on the
north end of the square bluff butte, but not until I had noticed that
the velocity of motion of the rear of the herd, by their sudden impact,
had knocked down several of their number at the edge of the water. I
stood looking at this spectacular scene in amused wonderment. It all
occurred so suddenly that I remember laughing outright.
But the fun was gone almost as soon as oxen and buffaloes. I hurried to
the top of the slope, up which the oxen ran, and saw they were fully
three-quarters of a mile away, still running, and headed toward a band
of buffaloes that were feeding about a mile beyond them. I followed the
oxen, and soon got into a depression of the ground where I could see
out but a short distance. When I came out upon higher ground, I saw the
oxen and three separate small herds of buffalo all running west,—by
which time the oxen were fully two miles ahead of me.
I slowed down to a moderately good walking gait, and set in for
a siege. I was very thirsty, and hungry, too. To my left about
one-fourth mile were some stunted brush and two cottonwood trees, in
the head of a draw that put into the creek our camp was on. I went to
this in hopes of finding water. Upon arriving there I found a little
seepage spring. Using my hands, I dug the mud and trash all out until I
had a hole some eight or ten inches deep and a foot in diameter. I then
sat down with my back against one of the cottonwood trees and rested a
few moments. When I saw the water-hole was full of water, I took a good
long draught at it, such as it was, and started on after the oxen.
Wanting a chew of tobacco, it suddenly occurred to me that that
hunter's luxury was in one of my coat pockets. I kept on west, heading
for a hill in the direction the oxen had gone. When I reached the top
of the hill the oxen were nowhere in sight. Here I had a good view of
the country in general for several miles around. But there were many
dips, spurs and ravines. I could neither see into nor behind them. I
sat down to rest and range the country over with my eyes, hoping to
catch a glimpse of the old oxen. I remained there until the sun was low.
Just southeast of this hill was the extreme head of the creek our camp
was on, and its course was to the southeast, and, as I judged, about
ten miles down. About three miles down the stream was quite a clump of
cottonwood trees.
My thoughts were now to look for the oxen's trail, and judging from
where I then was and where I had last seen the "whoa-haws," I thought
I could go to near the place. I then started back that way, and after
going a mile and a half or thereabouts, I commenced to describe a large
circle, intently looking for the trail. But upon coming around to the
starting-point I failed to find any sign of a trail.
By this time the sun was setting. Then I thought, "Down the creek
our camp is on I will go." Accordingly, I started to the creek in a
southeasterly direction from where I then was. I came to the creek
almost a mile above the clump of cottonwoods before mentioned. It
was then as dark as it would get, that beautiful February night. The
sky was as clear as a bell, and the moon had just fulled. On my near
approach to the trees I could hear the last quiet "quit" and nutter
of wild turkeys settling themselves for the night's roost. Cautiously
slipping up, with the roost between myself and the moon, I lay down
and peered up at trees full of wild turkeys. The evening was calm
and still. After watching them some little time I rose up and walked
under some of the trees they were roosting upon. I could and would
have shot one and broiled it, only for the reason that we had tried
one in the very camp on this same creek that my companions were now
camped upon, a few miles below. But that turkey was so bitter from
eating china-berries that it was unpalatable; and I supposed that all
turkeys were alike in that region. I disturbed them as I passed under
the trees, for they started the alarm, and kept up that excited "quit!
quit! quit!" uttering it more rapidly until it was answered back from
one end of the roost to the other.
I passed on down the creek about a mile below the roost, on my way to
camp and companions, whom I left the morning before, and was now pretty
tired and hungry, and feeling very cheap to be compelled to go back
and report that I did not find the wagon but lost the yoke of oxen.
Suddenly I heard a noise to my right between myself and the creek. Upon
stooping down I saw five buffaloes, not more than seventy-five yards
from me. Three were lying down, the other two were standing, one just
behind the other. The rear-most one was the smaller of the two. I sat
flat upon the ground, pointed the gun at the hind one, and tried to
draw a bead. But, bright as the night was, there was no accuracy. I
would raise and lower the gun, and finally I fired. At this time I was
west of them. They all broke and ran east down the creek. I rose up and
pointed the gun in the direction they were going, and fired again. I
then trotted on after them some 100 yards, stooped down and skylighted
them, and saw, off to the right of the others and in their rear, that
one had halted. I lay down flat, and soon the buffalo started to move
off, but after reeling and staggering for a few rods it fell over; and
then I was sure I had given it a mortal shot. Waiting some minutes, I
crawled up close, with the carcass between the moon and myself, when I
observed it was dead.
It must have been between 8 and 9 o'clock P. M. by this time. Now, I
thought, I have good meat and will have a roast. So, laying my Sharp's
44 on the short buffalo-grass and taking my butcher-knife from the
scabbard on the cartridge-belt, I cut out the hump that lay upper-most,
and started for the creek. After coming to the stream proper, which
stood in shallow pools, I followed down some distance and came to some
stunted cottonwoods and hackberry. Here, too, was a wild-turkey roost.
I stalked boldly along and came to a fallen dead cottonwood, laid the
buffalo hump on the small log, and proceeded to build a fire. All the
matches I left camp with were in a match-box in my inside coat pocket
with the oxen. But I had a gun. Taking the bullet out of a shell with
my teeth, I emptied all but a little of the powder out of the shell,
and after cutting out a piece of my cotton handkerchief I proceeded to
gather dry tinder from the lower side of the log. Then, after getting
some dry twigs and putting all in shape of a rat's nest against the
butt end of the log on the ground, I held the muzzle of the gun close
to the cotton rag that lay in this tinder nest, and fired the charge. I
got down on my knees, and soon I had fanned the ignited cotton into a
blaze, and in a short time I had a fine fire to cook my buffalo-steak
by.
As I approached the place I had waked up the turkeys, and when I began
breaking the twigs and dead limbs they flew in every direction. They
did all of their noisy "quit, quit, quit," and sputtering, before they
flew, but after they left their perches all one could hear was the
flapping of their wings. Then all was silence so far as the turkeys
were concerned.
I now sharpened some long green sticks, and slicing the meat across the
grain, I took those long slices and impaled them on the sticks, as one
would take up long stitches. Then pushing the other end of the stick
into the ground at an angle of about 45 degrees, close to the heat
of the fire, I let the meat broil. When the main fire burned down, I
gathered the hot embers in little heaps and placed slices of meat upon
them to broil also; and had I been fortunate enough to have a little
salt, 'twould have been a feast for a congressman,—yea, a President.
As it was, the rich juicy broil and roast were simply delicious, very
palatable and strengthening.
After eating I lay down and slept soundly at first, but _froze out_ as
the common expression is sometimes used. Then I got up and started on
down the creek. I had not gone over a mile, until in front of me and on
my left I noticed a peculiar-looking object. Lying down to skylight it,
to my great surprise and delight I saw it was the two old work-oxen.
They were as innocent, docile and contented as if they were in some
barnyard in eastern Kansas instead of sly old runaways. As I walked up
to them they arose and stretched themselves just as if they had had an
all-night's rest. They had turned in towards this creek east of the
circle I had made the evening before, and I had walked over their trail
the day before when going west towards the hill spoken of while I was
going from where I scooped the mud out of the seepy spring. All of
which accounts for my not finding them the previous day. Their animal
instinct taught them where our camp was, and after getting over their
stampede fright and terror they calmed down and turned for camp. And
when in the early morning I accidentally ran across them, my surprise
was great. I first untied my coat and put it on, and took a chew of
tobacco. The pack on the yoke was yet taut and safe—thanks to my
little experience in learning both the diamond and Texas hitch in the
mountains of New Mexico. The only thing missing was the coffee-pot. It
had been tied with a whang string to the outside of the pack, and had
come loose and lost off somewhere.
I drove the oxen down to the creek, where there was a china-wood grove,
unpacked my outfit, tied one end of the lariat around the near ox's
horns, and snubbed them up to a china-wood tree. I then proceeded to
build a fire and cook breakfast. By this time it was broad daylight.
Unrolling my pack, I took out the bacon, sliced off some, took the
frying-pan, went down to the bank of the creek to a water pool, scooped
the pan full of water, came back to camp, and after filling the tin
cup I put the slices of bacon in the pan and placed it on the fire to
parboil. I now went to the water again and washed my face and hands
thoroughly. When the bacon was parboiled and fried, I split open one
of the cakes of bread laid the slices of meat on one half and poured
the meat-fryings on the other. Then, heating the frying-pan very hot, I
poured the cold water from the tin cup into the pan, and rinced it out.
Then filling the pan again with water from the pool, I soon had me some
good strong coffee.
After eating my breakfast, I lay down a while on my bedding, and by the
time the sun was an hour high was again on my way after the abandoned
wagon. Looking down the creek our camp was on, after I had left the
creek, and getting on a rise in the land, I could see very plainly a
gypsum bluff near our camp, and not more than three miles down the
creek. I now reasoned that from where I was it was twelve or fourteen
miles to the wagon, and I would have to take a little east by north
course, which I now did, and traveled until the sun had passed the
meridian. When I finally came in sight of the wagon, about two miles
off to the northwest of the way I was then going, there was a bunch of
china-wood, straight north, and some water-holes by them, where we had
nooned the day we passed the lone wagon. To this spot I went. Now I was
little less than half a mile from the wagon. I took off the pack from
the yoke, unyoked the oxen, watered them, lariatted the near ox near
by, and got some dinner. I had killed a cottontail rabbit about the
middle of the forenoon. This I stewed in the frying-pan, with some thin
slices of bacon added.
After dinner I rested for an hour or more, then yoked up the oxen,
and drove them out to bring the wagon to this place for the night.
After getting there and hitching onto the wagon I found it hard to
budge. The wheels were nearly all set. They were gummed. But I geed
and hawed until I finally got all the wheels to rolling, and got back
to my temporary camp all right. I stopped the wagon on solid ground;
then with the hatchet I tapped the taps until I got them loose, and
by jumping the wheels I greased the wagon. That night I slept in the
wagon-box with one blanket and part of the wagon-sheet under me and
the other two blankets and half the wagon-sheet over me, using my coat
for a pillow. And there alone in that wild-game land I felt perfectly
secure, for as yet we gave no thought to the Indians.
The next morning I made me a wagon-seat of china-wood poles, placed all
my bedding upon it for a cushion, and that same evening I had rejoined
my companions, with the wagon pulled in at last by my runaway oxen.
FAVORITE HUNTING-GROUNDS.
Many hunters had their favorite hunting-grounds when the killing was at
its height; during the years 1876-7. Frequently, when several outfits
would chance to meet at some regular camping-ground _en route_ to and
from the great game park, they would discuss the variety and quantity
of game at such-and-such places. But what I saw in what are now Howard
and Mitchell counties, in Texas, will ever be indelibly impressed upon
my mind.
It was on the Red Fork of the Colorado and its tributaries. The time
was the fall and early winter of 1877. For two months a man named Cox
and myself hunted together. I did the killing, and roamed around a good
deal on horseback. The first month the buffalo were scattering, and
not very plentiful, the first three weeks; but during all this time
wild turkeys were so numerous that no attention was paid to them at
all. Bear were plentiful. Deer were in bands of from two to fifty. Here
were the musk hog, beaver, otter, mink, polecat, coyote, and prairie
wolves. Panther were very numerous, and one day I met a hunter with
what he called a mountain lion hide. He had killed the animal early
that morning in some rough breaks on the north side of the Red Fork.
I called it a cougar-hide; and if there is any difference between the
two, I never could distinguish it. This hunter told me he saw a large
buck antelope kill a rattlesnake that morning. Said he watched the
unequal fight from a distance of 150 yards.
He asked me if I had been at the Hackberry holes. I told him no.
"Well," he said, "you go there, and forever afterwards you can tell
fish stories."
He told me where to find them after he had described the place to me;
on that same day I rode to these holes. They were a wonderful sight—one
link after another, like a chain of long, oblong, clear water-holes.
Some were thirty feet in depth, as I learned afterwards.
I followed these holes up to the Divide between the Red Fork and North
Concho Divide, and there near the summit were the famous Hackberry
Springs. They boldly and strongly broke out of the hillside, and rushed
down into the flat towards the Colorado river. It was clear cold water,
and seemed to me to be non-mineralized. I was charmed with the spot,
and wanted the satisfaction and pleasure of once camping upon the
Hackberry.
I went back down the stream, passing by some five or six of the
deep-blue oblong water-holes, and noticed that every one of them fairly
teemed with fish. They were mostly the blue, forked-tail channel
catfish.
I hurried to camp, some seven miles away and told a "fish story." Cox
had an Irish Catholic brother-in-law with him in camp, who said: "Good!
To-morrow is Friday. Let us pull for there and fish and feast."
Early the next morning we were on the route for that place. We reached
our destination about 9 A. M., pitched our camp among some chittim-wood
trees, and went to fishing,—each fellow fishing from a different
water-hole. We used the liver from a large fat deer we had killed on
our way to the fishing-grounds. I did not have a timepiece, but I don't
think I had fished to exceed ten minutes when I quit and started for
camp, about 200 yards away. I had caught five catfish. The smallest
weighed 2-1/2 pounds and the largest one 9 pounds.
I dressed the catch and was building the camp-fire, when Cox came in
with seven fish ranging from 1-1/2 to 12 pounds each. Soon Dennis Ryan
came in with four of a nearly uniform size, weighing at the top notch,
all four of them, 24 pounds.
We camped here several days. On the third day after coming to this camp
I had ridden west some two miles and sighted a band of buffalo, out of
which I killed twelve,—all good robe hides.
On coming into camp I observed the wagon and team gone. My first
thought was that Cox and Ryan had heard my shooting, hitched up, and
gone out to skin the buffaloes they thought I had killed. I saw the
bedding all rolled up and the ammunition-box on top of it, and a piece
of paper fastened to the box. Upon looking closely I saw it was a note
from Cox saying:
"We cilled threa barr. One old shee and two cubs comin yearlins we gone
arter the mete and hides don't be frade.—J. Cox."
I got me some dinner. Took the label off a baking-powder can and wrote
on the blank side of it:
"Killed twelve buffaloes. Gone to skin them. Come a due west course."
This note I attached to a fishing-pole and fastened the pole to the
ammunition-box, and struck out for my killing. I had skinned nine of
the carcasses; the sun was low, and I was nearly four miles from camp,
when a man rode up to me and notified me that I was on his range.
I asked him where his camp was.
He said, "At Agua Grande" (the big springs of the Colorado).
I then told him that my camp was on Hackberry. "Now," said I, "I have
been to the Big Springs and you are fully twelve miles from your camp.
I am about three and a half or four miles from mine. It doesn't make
any difference how long each of us has been encamped at each place;
these buffaloes are nearer my camp than yours. Besides, I got to them
first."
Then I asked him if that was satisfactory. He was yet on his horse,
about twenty feet from me. He ignored my question, but asked me who I
was and where I came from. I told him my name and how long I had been
on the Range. That I came from the Staked Plains trouble of the summer
before to Fort Concho with Captain Nolan, to serve as a witness to
Capt. Nolan's report to the War Department.
The man said, "Hold on! Hold on! That's enough. So you are one of the
buffalo-hunters that were after the Injuns? Now, pardner, you can have
the whole country. Kill 'em right in my own camp if you want to."
He then dismounted and helped me skin the other three, and then went
to camp with me and stayed all night. Cox and Ryan were preparing the
supper when we came in sight of the camp-fire, for it had now grown
dark.
This visitor's home was in eastern Tom Green county, and he was
enthusiastic in praising the northern hunters who had come down on
the Southern Range and "fit" (as he expressed it) the Indians. He
declared that now the Indians were out of the way and the buffalo about
gone the country would soon settle up. So General Sheridan was right!
The hunters had actually made this possible. This visitor's name was
Parker. He told us that a few days before a man in a camp at the Soda
Springs had cut an artery in his left arm and would have bled to death,
only he managed to tie a strong rawhide string around the arm above the
wound, and by using the steel that he sharpened the knife with made
a torniquet and stopped the flow of the blood. The man, he said, was
alone, five miles from camp, skinning buffalo, and was afoot. After
the accident he started for camp, and lost his way. When darkness came
on he kept wandering around over the prairie and in the breaks until
nearly exhausted, when he sat down on the edge of a worn buffalo-trail,
and had been sitting there but a short time when he heard a noise, and,
peering through the dim starlight, he saw three buffaloes coming down
the trail he was sitting in. He pointed his gun in their direction and
fired, and by accident killed an old stub-horned bull. The other two
bolted, and ran as fast as they could. Some two or three minutes after
he had fired at the buffalo he heard a big fifty boom out plainly and
distinctly to the eastward, not far off from him. Thinking it to be
an answer to a distress signal, he fired his gun in midair, and heard
the ever-welcome, "Youpie way ho!" He answered back, and soon in the
semi-darkness he was piloted into his own camp.
And this is just simply another of the many remarkable incidents that
happened on the Range during the passing of the buffalo.
THE UNSEEN TRAGEDY.
The unseen tragedy occurred near the North Concho, where two brothers
were encamped during the last winter of the big slaughter. The
surviving brother's story was:
"We were sitting in our camp, loading ammunition. It was about 10 A. M.
when my brother said:
"'There are two old stub-horned bulls going up the ravine that we found
the Indian skeleton in. I'll take my gun and head them off at the top
of the Divide, and kill them.'
"He cut across, trotting along afoot, about three-quarters of a mile,
to intercept them.
"From camp I could not see the place where the report of the gun came
from. I first heard one shot, then a short interval, then two shots
in as quick succession as could be fired from a Sharp's lever gun.
Then all was quiet. My brother not returning, after nearly an hour had
elapsed I thought he must have killed both animals and was skinning
them; hence I went to work and got dinner. After eating I hitched up
the team and drove out after the hides. When I got on top of the hill I
saw a dead buffalo in front of me about 200 yards away, and on beyond
a little ways further I saw another dead one, and my brother lying on
the ground about fifteen feet behind that dead animal. I hurried on to
where George was lying, only to find him quite dead."
How did it happen? No one knows. His neck was broken, and his body
badly bruised. Presumably, he, thinking the buffalo dead, or at least
dying, walked up to him, when the old denizen of the plains made
his last fight for life,—arose, and dealt George Bryan the blow that
broke his neck, and landed him where he lay when found. This seems
reasonable, from the fact that his gun was lying quite close to the
buffalo when found. He evidently fell dead after snuffing out the life
of the hunter. Yet this, like many other tragedies that occurred in the
destruction of the great herds that roamed from the Rio Grande river to
Manitoba, and then on farther, is a mystery.
BELLFIELD AND THE DRIED APPLES.
During the time that many of the camps banded together for mutual
protection, and during the Indian raids of 1877, George Bellfield, of
Adobe Walls and Casa Amarilla notoriety, was camped upon a tributary
of the Colorado river. Joe Hoard, Joe Rutledge and Frank Lewis each
joined him. They and George mutually agreed to camp together. None of
them having a camp helper at the time, it was agreed among them to take
"turn about" in doing the cooking. It must be remembered that George
was of Teutonic origin, and talked very brokenly. As they started in,
George's was the fourth turn. As the other three were leaving camp one
morning for the day's hunt, Frank Lewis called back:
"O, George! Cook some dried apples. We hain't had any for a long time
now."
George made no pretensions as a cook, but his main hobby was to have
a great plenty. There was a large army camp kettle in camp, that held
five gallons, bought at a sale of condemned goods at Fort Elliott. He
filled this kettle nearly full of dried apples, poured water on until
the kettle was full, and placed it on hot coals to simmer. Soon the
apples began to swell and heave up above the top of that camp-kettle.
George scraped off a messpan full from the top of the kettle, shoveled
some more coals around the bottom, and went ahead with his other duties.
Soon he noticed the kettle was again top-heavy. He grabbed up a
frying-pan, filled it, then got a Dutch oven and baled it full. He
thought strange of it, stopped, and stood watching them still heaving
up.
He then ran to the wagon nearest the fire, jerked a wagon-sheet from
under his bed, drew it up alongside the kettle, and scooped and scraped
apples off the top as fast as they would rise, until he had a windrow
of partly swelled apples.
Then the swelling stopped, and the apples were cooking in a normal
condition when the men came into camp. The first thing he said was:
"By shing! der vas a pig bargain in dem drite apples. Dey swell much as
dree dimes. Ven I goes to Charley Rath's I puys me soom more yust like
dem."
This is the same George Bellfield who came in to the Adobe Walls, after
the Indians raised the siege in 1874, and seeing the prairie strewn
with dead horses (for half a mile around were dead horses which the
hunters had killed from under mounted warriors), asked the question:
"Vat kind of a disease is der matter mit de horses?"
He was told by Cranky McCabe, "They died of lead poison."
Bellfield was all unconscious that a fierce attack had been made,
and a three-days siege had been laid upon a small band of bold
buffalo-hunters, and this by as daring a combination of tribes as ever
roamed the Southwest. At the time all this happened, Bellfield was in
his camp, alone, eight miles up the Canadian river, while there were
thousands of Indians roaming at will all over the country. Yet, somehow
they missed him; otherwise the author would never have seen honest,
whole-souled George Bellfield.
AN INCIDENT OF BEN JACKSON'S EXPERIENCE.
Most all the big-game hunters were men of adventure. They loved the
wild, uninhabited region of the great Southwest. Nearly all of them
had read of Daniel Boone wandering alone in the wilds of the then
uninhabited lands east of the Mississippi. Most of these men had passed
through the War of the Rebellion, on one side or the other. They were
of necessity self-reliant, and could and did meet every emergency as a
matter of course.
Take the incident of Ben Jackson. He left his lonely camp, 200 miles
from Fort Worth, with a two-horse load of buffalo-hides. Twelve miles
from his starting-point three Indians made a running attack on him.
He killed one of them and the other two ran out of range of his gun.
He was on the divide between North and South Pease rivers. After
traveling a mile or so from the dead Indian, he noticed the other two,
paralleling him,—one on each side of him and just out of range. All at
once "kerchug!" and down went the left front wheel of the wagon. The
sudden drop brought Ben to the ground; also gun, mess-kit, bedding, and
ammunition-box.
He was nearly a mile from wood and water. The two Indians saw the
predicament he was in, and they circled in between him and the South
Pease river. He unhitched his team, hobbled them close to the wagon,
laid down flat upon the ground, crawled like a snake towards a break
to the right of him, and when 300 yards from his outfit he wriggled
himself into a deep buffalo-wallow in the edge of a prairie-dog town.
And here he lay, peeping out on the flat and waiting events.
The hill in the break towards which he had been crawling was less than
200 yards from him. While lying here, his quick, alert ear and steady
eye taking everything around him, and his mind busy evolving a way out
of his present predicament, a large diamond rattlesnake came crawling
obliquely just in front of him from a near-by prairie-dog hole. Not
wishing to disclose his position to the Indians by shooting the snake,
he suddenly pressed the heavy gun-barrel down on the snake, about six
inches back of its head. Pressing the gun down hard with his left
hand, he took his wiping-stick in his right hand and played a tattoo
on its head until he had killed it. All the time he was doing this
the body was wriggling and writhing, while the rattlers kept the ever
zee-zee-zz-z until death.
All that time two wild plains Indians were seeking Ben's life. The dead
Indian's horse was grazing towards his wagon. Ben heard a horse whinny
behind the breaks he had started for. Looking intently, he soon saw an
Indian crawling around a point in the break towards him. Without being
seen, Jackson had got into the wallow. He waited until the Indian's
body was in full view. The warrior rose up in a sitting posture,
when Ben, seeing this, drew a bead, fired, and sent him to the happy
hunting-grounds.
After the Indian had rolled over, Ben, thinking perhaps he was "playing
possum" on him, waited some little time, when he heard a loud halloo,
the sound coming from the direction of the wagon. Upon looking around
he saw "Limpy Jim" Smith. Looking again, and seeing the last Indian he
shot still lying where he fell, he got up and walked out upon the flat
and hailed the man at the wagon, saying:
"Glad you came, for with Injuns, snakes, and my wagon breaking
down, I've got a good deal to do, and I want you to help me set my
wagon-tire."
Smith, in relating the affair, said Jackson was cool and deliberate,
and acted as if such things were of an everyday occurrence.
Smith was on his way north from the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos
to Fort Elliott. He was on horseback, and, seeing Jackson's outfit from
a distance, rode to it from sheer curiosity; for people were few and
far apart in that region at that time of the year, this being early in
the fall of 1876, and before the general outbreaks of the spring of
1877.
The rest of this story,—how the two men unloaded the hides, got the
two dead Indians' ponies, went to the South Pease river, got a keg of
water, cut some china-wood poles, brought all to the wagon, cooked and
ate a hearty meal, then made false spokes for the wheel, wrapped the
felloes with gunny-sacks, heated the tire with a buffalo-chip fire,
reset the tire, put on the wheel, loaded everything onto the wagon,
and drove that evening and night twenty-five miles, and at daylight
next morning were in sight of the Kiowa Peak, where they felt they were
perfectly safe,—is only one of the many incidents that happened on
the buffalo range which illustrate the correctness of the saying that
"truth is stranger than fiction."
MY KANSAS QUEEN.
1. My kingdom is the prairie,
The grasses, and the flowers;
And listening to the summer wind
I while away the hours.
My wealth is but the love of you,
Who are so free from guile;
The only tribute that I ask
Is the sunshine of your smile.
CHORUS.
My prairie princess,
Give me your heart;
I'll be unhappy if we live apart;
Transform this lonely life of mine
To gladsome summer shine;
Be my sunny-haired sweetheart,
Be my Kansas queen.
3. No matter if the winter sky
With clouds is overcast;
Your face holds all the sunshine
Of the happy summer past;
And the morning star of boyhood
Was never half so fair,
As when the tiny snowflakes
Turn to diamonds in your hair.
CHORUS.
JOHN GUERINE, Author.
[Illustration: AT THE-SPRING-OF-THE-SHINING-ROCK]
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│ Transcriber's note: │
│ │
│ Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. │
│ Other errors are noted below. │
│ │
│ Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant │
│ form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. │
│ │
│ Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. Word │
│ combinations that appeared with and without hyphens were changed │
│ to the predominant form if it could be determined, or to the │
│ hyphenated form if it could not. │
│ │
│ Corrections in the spelling of names were made when those │
│ could be verified. Otherwise the variations were left as │
│ they were. │
│ │
│ Corrections: │
│ Page ix: Terwillijer's → Terwilliger's. (How Terwilliger's Cattle │
│ Stampeded.) │
│ Page 21: Quantrell → Quantrill. (Quantrill was the last man │
│ he saw.) │
│ Page 25: Ruffins → Ruffians. (The horde of Border Ruffians.) │
│ Page 117: tie → tied them. (...could and tied them.) │
│ Page 126: head the gully → head across the gully. (I turned to │
│ the south to head across the gully.) │
│ Pages 128, 134: Loganstein → Lobenstein. (Lobenstein & Company.) │
│ Page 149: jate → fate. (...and bemoaning his _fate_, as he │
│ called it.) │
│ Page 299: spreckled → speckled. (...where the speckled trout │
│ leaps.) │
│ Dedication page and others: Reese → Rees. │
│ │
│ Variants unchanged: │
│ Arkansas and Arkansaw. │
│ Rinced and rinsed. │
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