About the sixth day out we struck three thousand Comanche Indians and became pretty badly scared up. We had camped for the night on the plains, at the forks of Mulberry and Canyon Paladuro; a point from whence could be seen one of the roughest and most picturesque scopes of country in the west.
The next morning Jack Ryan went with the wagon to pilot it across Mulberry Canyon, while "Van" and I branched off down into Canyon Paladuro to look for cattle signs. We succeeded in finding two little knotty-headed two-year old steers with a bunch of buffalo. They were almost as wild as their woolly associates, but we managed to get them cut out and headed in the direction the wagon had gone.
About noon, on turning a sharp curve in the canyon, we suddenly came in full view of our wagon surrounded with a couple of thousand red skins, on horse back, and others still pouring down from the hills, on the east.
It was too late to figure on what to do, for they had already seen us, only being about half a mile off. You see the two wild steers had turned the curve ahead of us and attracted the indians attention in that direction. We couldn't see anything but the white top of our wagon, on account of the solid mass of reds, hence couldn't tell whether our boys were still among the living or not. We thought of running once, but finally concluded to go up and take our medicine like little men, in case they were on the war-path. Leaving Whisky-peet, who was tied behind the wagon, kept me from running more than anything else.
On pushing our way through the mass we found the boys, winchesters in hand, telling the old chiefs where to find plenty of buffalo. There were three thousand in the band, and they had just come from Ft. Sill, Indian Territory, on a hunting expedition. They wanted to get where buffaloes were plentiful before locating winter quarters.
From that time on we were among indians all the time. The Pawnee tribe was the next we came in contact with. Close to the Indian Territory line we run afoul of the whole Cheyenne tribe. They were half starved, all the buffalo having drifted south, and their ponies being too poor and weak to follow them up. We traded them out of lots of blankets, trinkets, etc. For a pint of flour or coffee they would give their whole soul—and body thrown in for good measure. We soon ran out of chuck too, having swapped it all off to the hungry devils.
We then circled around by Ft. Elliott, and up the Canadian river to the ranch, arriving there with eighteen head of our steers, after an absence of seven weeks.
We only got to remain at the ranch long enough to get a new supply of chuck, etc., and a fresh lot of horses, as Moore sent us right back to the Plains. In a south westerly direction this time.
We remained on the Plains scouting around during the rest of the winter, only making short trips to the ranch after fresh horses and grub. We experienced some tough times too, especially during severe snow storms when our only fuel, "buffalo-chips," would be covered up in the deep snow. Even after the snow melted off, for several days afterwards, we couldn't get much warmth out of the buffalo-chips, on account of them being wet.
About the first of April, Moore called us in from the Plains to go up the river to Ft. Bascom, New Mexico, on a rounding-up expedition. We were gone on that trip over a month.