When I got to camp—it having been moved south about twenty miles from where I left it—the boys had just eaten dinner and two of them were fixing to go back and hunt me up, thinking some sad misfortune had befallen me.
When we got to Blue Creek, a tributary to South Canadian, camp was located for awhile, until a suitable location could be found for a permanent ranch.
Mr. Bates struck out across the country to the Canadian river, taking me along, to hunt the range—one large enough for at least fifty thousand cattle.
After being out three days we landed in Tascosa, a little mexican town on the Canadian. There were only two americans there, Howard & Reinheart, who kept the only store in town. Their stock of goods consisted of three barrels of whisky and half a dozen boxes of soda crackers.
From there we went down the river twenty-five miles where we found a little trading point, consisting of one store and two mexican families. The store, which was kept by a man named Pitcher, had nothing in it but whisky and tobacco. His customers were mostly transient buffalo hunters, they being mostly indians and mexicans. He also made a business of dealing in robes, furs, etc., which he shipped to Fort Lyons, Colorado, where his partner, an officer in the United States Army lived. There were three hundred Apache indians camped right across the river from "Cold Springs," as Pitcher called his ranch.
A few miles below where the little store stood Mr. Bates decided on being the center of the "L. X." range; and right there, Wheeler post-office now stands. And that same range, which was then black with buffaloes, is now stocked with seventy-five thousand fine blooded cattle, and all fenced in. So you see time makes changes, even out here in the "western wilds."
Chapter XVII.
AN EXCITING TRIP AFTER THIEVES.