At last, however, all was arranged, and by general order, Corporal Bromfield, three privates, a six-mule team, and a wagon with a white teamster, and fifty days’ rations, were detailed for my use. I started out with this escort, elated by the knowledge that I now had men and means of transportation upon which I could depend.

It is indeed a lovely drive from Fort Sill to Red River. We were rarely out of sight of the impressive Wichita Mountains, which rise from a sea of green plains like an islet in a lake. We reached the river on the second day, and had a mile of sand to pull through. At one time I thought that we would go down in the treacherous quicksands, but our magnificent team of dark-colored mules and the skill of the teamster carried us safely over. I have since seen, in the sands of this same river, holes ten feet deep which had been dug to rescue wagons loaded with valuable goods, that had sunk down to bedrock during high water.

When we reached the beds of the Big Wichita, we worked both Indian and Coffee creeks, a few miles apart. Here at last, after so much toil and so many hardships, I found myself in the very center of the fossil-bearing strata, and secured a number of fine specimens, among them the great salamander Eryops, the wonderful fin-backed lizard Naosaurus, that peculiar batrachian Diplocaulus, and other forms.

On arriving at the fossil beds, I showed Corporal Bromfield where I wanted him to pitch my wall tent, and went into the field with Mr. Wright, in search of fossils. When I returned at night, I found that the corporal had pitched my tent on a level and his own A-tent as close to it as he possibly could. “This will never do,” I said to myself. “Discipline will go to the dogs, if I allow such close companionship.” So I ordered him to take down his tent and pitch it a hundred yards away, and to follow this rule in future. The soldiers were very indignant, but they obeyed orders. As a general rule I found that I could handle them, although there were a few breaches of discipline.

I was so unfortunate on this expedition as to have my tent burned, with nearly all my personal property. When the men got to the flaming tent, the first thing they did was to cut the guy-ropes and let it blow over. They then, at my request, brought water and threw it on the burning sacks that held the fossils. This saved the fossils, but to do so we had to let everything else go.

On the twenty-fifth of April, we started with our load for Decatur, the nearest railroad point. We took the Henrietta road, and camped on the Little Wichita, where, in the sandy shales of the Upper Carboniferous or Permian, we found a locality rich in the fossil flora of that region. We secured a number of large fern fronds, etc.

Wild turkey were, as usual, abundant. Lee Irving, one of the escort, killed a hen and gobbler, and gave us a change from our customary diet of bacon. On the fourth of May, after a long journey, we plowed through the valley named, and well named, the Big Sandy, and passing through groves of splendid live oaks, pecans, water elms, and locusts, reached Decatur, the terminus of the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad. Here I delivered to the agent my precious load of fossils, which had cost me so much expense, labor, and anxiety, and set out on the return trip to Fort Sill; where, on the twelfth of May, after a journey without incident, I turned over my command to Major Henry. The next time I heard of this splendid officer, he was a brigadier general in command of Porto Rico.

CHAPTER IX
EXPEDITIONS IN THE TEXAS PERMIAN FOR PROFESSOR COPE, 1895, 1897

In the summer of 1895, sixteen years after my last expedition for Professor Cope, I was employed by him to make further explorations in the brakes of the Big Wichita. My assistant and cook was a farmer, Frank Galyean by name, who lived on Coffee Creek on the Vernon road, twenty-five miles north of Seymour. I camped a mile above his house on the west branch of the creek at Willow Springs, a favorite camping ground, as it was one of the few places in which water was always to be found. To the west rose Table Mountain, a hill several hundred feet high, and mountains of the same height extended in a southwesterly direction to Indian Creek, about four miles from camp.