A Gold Hunter's Experience

by Chalkley J. Hambleton

The next forenoon we drove on to the fort and camped a mile or two west of it for a day's rest. This was on the 20th of August, so we had been out twenty days on the road from St. Joe. At the fort was a postoffice and here we received letters from our friends in the East, and spent a good part of the day in writing, in response to them. Letters were brought here by the coaches of the overland express which carried the United States mail to California.

The fort consisted of a few buildings surrounded by a high adobe wall for protection; and adjoining was a strong stockade for horses and oxen. There were a few United States troops here. Just outside the fort grounds were some ranches, stores, saloons and trading posts. The two Missourians proceeded forthwith to get dead drunk and it took them till next day to sober up. By way of apology they said the whisky tasted "so good" after being so long without it. We had no whisky on our train. It was one of the very few that crossed the plains in those days without that, so considered, essential article in frontier life.

Personally, through the entire period of my "Pike's Peak" experience, I adhered strictly to my custom of not tasting spirituous or malt liquors, nor using tobacco in any form.

We were now on the main central route of travel from the States to the mountains, Salt Lake, California and Oregon. We saw teams and trains daily going in both directions, and Kearney was a favorite place for them to stop over a day and rest. Our course now lay along the south side of the Platte, clear to Denver; and with the prospect of level roads and plenty of grass and water, we looked forward hopefully to a pleasant trip the rest of the way. The valley of the Platte is a sandy plain, nearly level, extending westward for hundreds of miles from Kearney, bounded on the north and the south by low bluffs, some four or five miles apart. Back of these lie the more elevated, dry plains extending to great distances.

Winding through this valley is the Platte river, a half a mile or more wide, with water from an inch to two feet deep, running over a sandy bottom and filled with numberless islands of shifting sand. The banks were lined with willows and cottonwood bushes and bordered in many places by green, grassy meadows, but trees were a rarity and for some two hundred miles we did not see one larger than a good sized bush.

The day we camped near Kearney we began to see buffalo in small groups off a few miles to the south and west. When I awoke next morning, soon after daylight, I saw a lone one quietly eating grass about half a mile from camp. I got out a rifle and went toward him, stooping or going on my hands and knees through the wet grass, till within good rifle shot. I then stood up, took deliberate aim just behind the shoulder, and fired. He gave a quick jump, looked around and started toward me on the run with head down, in usual fashion, for a charge. My thought was that I had hit, but not hurt him. I dropped into the grass and made my way on hands and knees as fast as possible toward camp, a little agitated. Losing sight of me the animal soon stopped, stood still a few minutes and then suddenly dropped to the ground. He had been shot through the heart.

This was my first and last buffalo, as sneaking up to them and shooting them down did not seem much more like sport than shooting down oxen. I was neither a sufficiently expert rider nor hunter to chase and shoot them on horseback. The one I shot was carved by Sollitt and one of the men, and furnished us fresh meat for breakfast and several meals thereafter.

During the day we passed a ranch, occupied by a man and his son, twelve or fourteen years old. The boy had eight or ten buffalo calves in a pen, which he said he had caught himself and intended to sell to parties returning to their homes in the East. He had a well-trained little pony, which he would mount, with a rope in hand that had a noose at the end, and ride directly into the midst of a small drove of buffalo, and while they scattered and ran would slip his rope about the neck of a calf and lead it back to the ranch. The calf would side up to the pony and follow it along as if under the delusion that it was following its mother. The man traded in cattle by picking up estrays and buying, for a song, those that were footsore and sick, keeping them till in condition and then selling them to passing trains that were in need.

We now began to see buffalo quite plentifully off to the southwest, in small groups, and in droves of twenty or more. Sometimes hunters on horseback, who had camped near Kearney, were indulging in the excitement of the hunt, chasing and shooting, and in turn being chased by the enraged animals. That evening we camped on the verge of the great herd that extended some sixty or seventy miles to the westward, and blackened the bluffs to the south, and the great plains beyond as far as the eye could reach. This great herd was not a solid, continuous mass, but was divided up into innumerable smaller herds or droves consisting of from fifty to two hundred animals each. These kept together when grazing, marching or running, the bulls on the outside and the cows and calves in the center. Sometimes these small herds were separated from each other by a considerable space.

This great herd had probably started northward from the Arkansas in the spring and had now reached the Platte, where they lingered for water and the better grass that was found along the river. Following in the wake and prowling on the outskirts of this slowly moving host, were thousands of wolves, collected from the distant plains, to feast upon the young and the weakly, and the carcasses of those that were killed by accident or the hunter's gun.