The next morning he gave me directions as to how to reach the old trail that led to the Fort. I was to go to Wagoner’s cattle camp, where the trail crossed Beaver Creek, and spend the night there. I traveled nearly all day, and reached the ranch building, the only house I had seen since I left the school-teacher’s, only to find the camp deserted. Not a man nor a cow was in sight. As I had had no lunch, I was very hungry, and this being my first visit to this region, I did not know where to turn for food and shelter. At last, however, I saw a horseman coming toward me from the northeast, and rode to meet him. He was a cowboy. I inquired where Wagoner had gone, and learned that he had left a few days before for the Indian Territory. I was told, moreover, that the nearest place at which I could get a meal was back on Coffee Creek, which I had left in the morning. When I complained of being cold and hungry and of not liking to sleep in my saddle blanket on the ground without supper, the cowboy replied that he had not had a morsel to eat for three days and that he had slept for three nights in his saddle blanket. After that I said no more.
I was unwilling to return all the way back to the hospitable roof that had sheltered me the night before, and continued my journey, with no expectation of coming upon a human habitation until I reached Red River the next night. It is hard to express my delight, therefore, when, upon reaching the divide between Beaver Creek and Red River, I saw a lot of tents, some distance to the right of the trail. I hurried to the encampment, and found that it belonged to the locating engineer of the Denver and Fort Worth Railroad. When I told the young man from whom I had obtained this information that I wanted to see the engineer, he grinned (I was not a very pleasant-looking individual, covered as I was with the dust of travel), but he opened the door of the tent and said, “Here’s a man who wants to see you.”
As the occupant of the tent came forward, I presented to him my letter of introduction from the Secretary of War; and I saw the grin disappear from the face of my guide as the engineer shook hands with me cordially, and remarking, “That is a good enough letter of introduction for me,” placed himself at my service. When I told him that my pony and I were hungry, he instructed the man who had expected to see me refused the courtesies of the camp to get up a good supper for me and to care for my pony. Then, inviting me to make myself at home, he entertained me royally, and after I had made a hearty meal, opened a bale of new woolen blankets, and provided me with a most comfortable bed in his own tent. I hope if Major J. F. Menette sees this story, he will accept at this late day my thanks for his kindly treatment.
The next night I reached the crossing on Red River, where I found a house and stayed all night. The next day, about nightfall I crossed Cach Creek, and saw at my right, in a bend of the creek, an elevated “bench” on which a tepee was pitched. There were two Indians standing about, one a large, fleshy, good-natured man, the other thin, with large, prominent cheek bones, a typical Comanche. A large flock of children ran out to greet me. I must confess that I felt a little uneasy at being so entirely alone and at the mercy of these Indians, but I made the best of it, and as several turkeys were lying on the ground, I told the good-natured man that I wanted his squaw to cook me one for supper. This she proceeded to do, removing the breast and putting it on a wooden spit which she stuck in the ground before a large bed of coals and constantly turned until the meat was done. This, with a cup of coffee which she made me and the bread crumbs from my lunch, gave me quite a meal. I was too hungry to be fastidious.
The Indians were roasting camus, the bulb of the wild hyacinth, which grew plentifully in the creek bottom. They had dug a pit five feet deep and three in diameter and kindled a fire at the bottom, using at least a cord of wood to heat thoroughly the surrounding ground. The ashes were then scraped out, and the walls plastered with a mortar of mud, over which green grass was thickly strewn to prevent the bulbs from burning. The bulbs were then put in and covered with grass and mud, and a fire built on top of them. The next morning they were done, and were as much relished by these Indian children as popcorn or peanuts by the whites. I tasted some. They had a sweetish taste, a little like sweet potatoes, but they were so full of sand that my teeth were not strong enough to grind them up.
I put off going to bed until late, as I dreaded sleeping in the high grass where I had left my saddle. But at last the children, who had been amusing me, went off to bed, and I decided to go too. I spread half my saddle blanket under me, and with my saddle for a pillow was just dozing off when I heard a rustle in the dead grass, and the thin Indian, whom I disliked, stuck his head almost into my face. He had something in his hands which he wanted to swap with me for some of my property, and the more I argued, the more determined he was to trade. He wanted my pony, my Winchester, everything I had, and I was afraid that he would take them whether or no. At last, however, he left, crawling through the grass as he had come; but I was just dropping off to sleep, when I heard the snake-like rustle again. I was getting mad by that time, and when the Indian parted the tall grass and peered through the opening, he faced the muzzle of my gun, while I told him with much vehemence that if he did not go about his business and let me get to sleep, I would bore a hole through him. This had the desired effect, and but for the cold, which wakened me often, I slept in peace the rest of the night.
I was wakened in the morning by a shot, and a wild turkey fell from a tree near where I had been sleeping. They were so tame and abundant that they roosted in camp. The jolly Indian was anxious to earn another quarter, and as I had ordered turkey for supper, he had concluded that I wanted one for breakfast. I was not quite so hungry this morning, and detected the Indian smell which is left on everything they touch; but I made a brave attempt not to show my disgust to my host.
After breakfast, as I started out for the trail, a boy of fourteen walked down with me and stood talking, with his hands tangled in my pony’s mane. I had given him some tobacco, and he was smoking a cigarette which he had made with a dry leaf. At our feet the path divided and encircled a little mound of earth covered with buffalo grass. When the boy had finished his smoke, he threw the still burning stump into this dead grass, which was damp with dew and sent up a dense column of smoke. This was all done so naturally that I thought nothing of it until I got up on the level prairie, where I could see for miles ahead. As far as the eye could reach, column after column of smoke was rising through the still morning air. It was thirty miles from the crossing at Cach Creek to Fort Sill, yet when I presented my letter to Major Guy Henry in the office at nine o’clock the next morning, the first question he asked was “Did you leave the crossing at Cach Creek about sunrise yesterday morning?” And when I answered that I had, he said that probably about ten or fifteen minutes after I left the creek, the Comanche chief had received notice by smoke signal that one man was coming over the trail toward the Fort.
In coming to Fort Sill, I had inadvertently come from one department into another, and the major had no power to send men out of his department without orders from General Sheridan, the commanding general of the Army. So I had to wait at Fort Sill until the matter could be arranged.
The southern cowboys, who hated the army blue and the darky soldiers who were stationed at the Fort, were doing all that they could to irritate the officers. While the latter were at dinner and the soldiers off duty, a squad of cowboys would ride into the post across the well-kept grass on the parade grounds up to the flagstaff, and fire at the Stars and Stripes. Another of their tricks was to shoot off the glass insulators from the government telegraph lines which connect the Fort with the headquarters at Leavenworth and with the Department of the Gulf. They had just accomplished this piece of mischief when I arrived at the Fort, and before the major could communicate with General Pope, Commander of the Department of the Missouri, in which Fort Sill was situated, he had to send out the signal sergeant to repair the line.