Crossing to the north side of the Canadian, we reached Moore's Creek, and were delighted to find that all along the Canadian, every four or five miles, were running streams of fine water. All the streams were timbered, some more heavily than others, and in the branches of the tall cottonwoods wild turkeys roosted by thousands, while deer and antelopes in great herds grazed in the grassy bottoms.
On Bugbee Creek we passed a camp where a white man named Wheeler had been killed that fall (1873) by Indians. The brush along the creeks was alive with quail, and we could see signs of fur animals, such as beaver, mink and otter. I was now going over ground that I should see again, but little did I dream of what the future would be.
We left the river at Moore's Creek, and went north until we struck the Palo Duro again, below where we had crossed it on our way down. Here we found quite a number of buffalo hunters camped for the winter.
Our object in making this trip was to locate a good buffalo range for the following summer. Our reason for going at this time of year was that there would be less danger of being molested by Indians, as the latter did not travel in winter, if they could avoid it, preferring the idleness and pleasure of a warm winter camp, well supplied with buffalo meat. Occasionally, however, a party of young bucks, thirsty for glory in taking scalps, would brave the cold weather and make a raid. After lying around camp with the boys on the Palo Duro for several days, we headed for our old camp on the Cimarron, where we found ourselves short of supplies, and continued on to Dodge City.
In making this big circle to Buffalo Springs, Red River, the ruins of Adobe Walls and back to Dodge City, we saw very few buffaloes; only now and then would we run across a bunch of old bulls. However, there were signs everywhere showing where thousands had been herding together, and we felt certain that they would come back to their old range in the spring.
It was sometime in February, 1874, when we got back to Dodge. We had seen enough to satisfy us that the thing to do would be to go down on the Canadian as soon as the weather settled. While waiting, we went out northwest of Dodge on my old hunting grounds. This was the last hunting I ever did north of the Arkansas. My face was set toward the forbidden country, where the Indians were looking for the scalps of white men.
In the latter part of March, 1874, I went into Dodge City, and there I met up with a lot of buffalo hunters who had come to town to get away from the lonesomeness, and have good time. There was lots of talk about the increasing scarcity of buffaloes on the old range, and all of us agreed that we would have to drift further south to make buffalo-hunting a paying business.
Those of us who had been venturing down in the Panhandle country described what we had seen, and gave our opinion of the region as a buffalo range, which, of course, was favorable.
In Dodge City at this time was a man named A. C. Myers, in the general merchandise business, who had once been a buffalo-hunter, and had built a smoke-house on Pawnee Fork, where he cured buffalo hams for eastern markets. The meat was prepared for smoking by taking the two hind quarters and dividing each into three chunks, which made six pieces of boneless meat, about the size of an ordinary pork ham. Myers sugar-cured each piece, smoked it, and sewed it in canvas. This kind of buffalo meat was the choicest, and commanded a high price on the market. Only a few dealers cured their meat in this way.
All the hunters assembled at Dodge were convinced that never again would there be a big run of buffaloes that far north, because of the enormous slaughter on that part of their range in 1872 and 1873. Our determination to drift south was opposed some by the handicap of being so far from a hide market. Myers solved this question by deciding to take his outfit and stock of merchandise and pull down into the good buffalo country, somewhere on the Canadian. We had no definite point in view, expecting to locate our camp where grass, timber, water and buffaloes most abounded.