Bearing to the northeast, we came into the Dodge City and Adobe Walls road at the Cimarron River. Another day's ride brought us to Crooked Creek. We were now out of dangerous country, and reached Dodge City safe and sound.
Ours was the first crowd to reach Dodge City after the fight at Adobe Walls, and the whole town turned out to see us. Everybody was anxious to learn the particulars, and we were asked thousands of questions. News of what had happened at the Walls had driven most of the buffalo-hunters to Dodge City, their camps stretching up and down the Arkansas near town.
We learned that a relief party, composed of buffalo-hunters and residents of Dodge, had started south in command of Tom Nixon. There were about forty men in the party. Nixon was killed a year or two later by "Mysterious Dave" Mathews. He was a well-known frontiersman.
We did not take life nor ourselves very seriously those days, and were soon entering into the fun at Dodge with the greatest enthusiasm, forgetful of the perils and hardships that so lately beset us. Things at Dodge were run for the fullest enjoyment of the present—there was not much material to occupy students of ancient history. The town had changed little since we had gone away. Several of the men who had come north from the Walls went straight to the depot and bought tickets for their homes in the east. They had enough of the Indians to last them several years, and were not ashamed to stand up and say so. Most of us were "locoed" with the sports and pastimes of the land where the wool was long and the customs wild. Drouth, scarcity of water-holes, "northers," rattlesnakes, Indians, even the United States Army, could not have driven us east of the ninety-ninth meridian of longitude.
The details of the fight at Adobe Walls were telegraphed to Fort Leavenworth. Troops were not despatched at once to the scene of the uprising, the Government taking the view that it would be best not to move until an expedition large enough to whip the Indians to a standstill could be sent into the field, General Miles reached Dodge City about August, going south about ten days later.
My old friend Jack Callahan, of whom I have frequently spoken, had just been employed as wagonmaster to go with the expedition. Meeting me in the street, he offered to make me his assistant. I had made up my mind to accept the position, but further down the street I came across John Curley, whom I had known at Hays City in 1868, when he was corral-master. Curley said that he believed he could get me placed as scout and guide with General Miles, which exactly suited me. We went at once to General Miles headquarters, where Curley introduced and recommended me. After asking me a few questions, General Miles turned to his adjutant and told him to put my name down. I held this position from August 6, 1874, to February 10, 1883, a period of nine years.
The troops moved out of Dodge City to the Arkansas and camped. General Miles assembled his scouts and tested their marksmanship by having them shoot at a snag in the river, calling our names as he pointed out the objects each was to shoot at. I never missed a single time.
Lieutenant Frank D. Baldwin, now a brigadier-general, was sent to Adobe Walls with two scouts, six Delaware trailers and a troop of cavalry to ascertain the situation of those who had remained at the Walls. We got there in five days. Baldwin had not recently seen much mounted service, and was very tired and saddle-worn by the time we reached Adobe Walls Creek.
About 4 o'clock in the afternoon of the day in to the Walls, seeing that night would come before we arrived, Baldwin ordered "Bat" Masterson and myself to ride ahead and tell the boys that the troops were coming. This precaution was taken lest the buffalo-hunters might mistake us for Indians and fire into us. I rode up within speaking distance and hollowed to the men and waved my hat, to let them know who I was. Recognizing me, they gave me a hearty reception.
There were a dozen or more men in the buildings, where they had been shut up for about two months. At no time had they ventured far away. They had kept their horses in the stockade, fearful of an attack by Indians; hay for the horses had been cut in the creek bottom. When Tom Nixon and his men came down from Dodge, Mrs. Olds and the greater part of the men went back with him. A number, however, preferred to remain at the Walls, however great the risk, and did so. The boys cooked me a hot supper and I was telling them stories of the outside world when the soldiers arrived about 9 o'clock.