All cattlemen know that cattle do not get over a scare like that very soon, and those were all longhorned Texas steers and would scare of their own shadow, and when one jumped they all went. So that night when we put them on the bed-ground, the boss wouldn’t put the Indians on night guard as he knew they would scare them for sure. So he put me on first guard, and he brought his bed and night horse out to the herd so he would be close if anything happened. He staked his horse and went to bed.
I was riding around the herd and they all seemed to be settled down fine, when all at once, quick as you could snap your finger, they were all running. It was very dark and it sounded like thunder when that herd stampeded. I was badly scared and I tried to stay in the lead of them as much as I could, but they would swing first one way and then another. I think they run about three miles, when something came out of the herd right longside of me. I knew it wasn’t a steer. It made a different noise from anything else that I had heard. I thought it was a ghost, and I pretty near fainted. It was the boss’ horse dragging the stake rope and the stirrups and saddle a-popping that scared the cattle and me, too. The horse had pulled his stake pin and stampeded the herd. After this ghost had disappeared, I got the cattle stopped but I still didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know where I was or where camp was, so I tried to sing and talk to the cattle and wait for help. Some of them began to bawl and I knew that was a good sign, as cattle will not scare so bad when some of them are bawling. In about an hour I heard the boss whistling and coming my way. He had walked to camp and got another horse, and come hunting me. He stayed the rest of the night with me. Luckily we had not lost any of them, as they all stayed together, but there was a lot of broken horns and lame cattle, as they had piled up several times in the run.
For several days those cattle were very nervous and we had considerable trouble watering them. A steer would see a little rock or a piece of grass that didn’t look just right—he would jump and away they would all go.
After about a month the other herd came and we had more cowboys. We were all right then as we had plenty of help, and began delivering beef to the Indians.
I remember one delivery we made, the boss sent me with a pack outfit and my orders were to camp about halfway of the twenty miles we had to go and make coffee for the cowboys that were bringing the cattle. It was raining that day, and as we were on the Indian reservation there was very little wood to build a fire with, so when I got to the place I was to camp everything was wet and nothing to make a fire with. I saw a pine box about two feet long in a cottonwood tree. I got it down and broke it up and inside of it were a few dried bones and a few pieces of red flannel. It was an Indian papoose grave—that was the way they buried their dead. I dumped the bones out and made a fire out of the box.
Old man Ryan, one of the owners of the cattle, was with us that day, and came ahead of the cattle to get some coffee. When he seen I had coffee made, he was very pleased, and told me I was a great boy. But when he went to pour out his coffee, he spied those bones. He asked me what they were, and when I told him he nearly fainted, and would not touch the coffee. But it didn’t affect those hungry cowboys when they got there; they told me I was wonderful, but the old gentleman said I was simply terrible. The old man was a very devout Catholic and said I would surely go to Hell when I died.
We would put those cattle in the government corral and an army officer would just look them over and accept them. They didn’t weigh them, but bought them so much a head.
After the inspector passed on them, they would call five or six Indians with their rifles. They would get up on the corral fence and shoot every one of them before they touched one. Then the army officer would take so many Indian families to each steer and let them divide it up. There was three tribes there, with a chief at the head of each tribe. I don’t know how many Indians was in each tribe but it looked like about 3,000 Indians—all Siouxs.
In about two hours there wouldn’t even be a tail of a steer left. Each family took their portion and went to their different camp grounds.
Those three chiefs’ names were Sitting Bull, Rain in the Face, and Gall—the latter two looked like old seasoned warriors, both had been wounded in battle several times. Sitting Bull was a younger man and looked like he had some white blood in his veins.