“June 22. We expected to reach the Pawnee Fork during the morning’s march, and as there were bluffs near the camp, and several streams intervening, thick-set with timber, favorable for ambuscade, the advance guard preceded the train a quarter of a mile. We were on the alert, our eyes searching every object, our guns ready to fire, as with bridle-rein firmly grasped, we galloped along in the bright summer morning. Our exposed position, and the continual expectation of the Camanche yell, kept us excited wildly enough, although no foe delayed our march. By noontide, the saddles were off—the wagons corâlled, and the tent pitched once more. Among the remains of the old camps, I found the skull and skeleton of an Indian. The sinews, well gnawed by the wolves, were not yet dry, and the skin and hair still graced the head, which, passed from hand to hand by the curious, was, at last, tossed into the turbulent waters of the flooded Pawnee Fork. The Camanche, whose head this was, had been killed a few days previous, in an encounter with traders. One or two others ‘went under’ at the same time, but their bodies had been rescued.
“On the opposite side of the creek, a train from the States was stopped like ourselves by the risen waters. I accompanied some of our men over to it. We swam across, holding our shirts and buckskins in one hand. At the camp we found a government train, some traders’ wagons, any quantity of gaping men, and a whitewoman—a real whitewoman! and we gazed upon her with great satisfaction and curiosity. After gleaning the ‘news,’ we returned in a full run to the creek, and, crossing as before, retailed our scanty information.
“The next day was beautiful, and we waited impatiently for the slow-receding stream to become fordable. The men scattered on both banks, the grazing cattle and caballadas, with the white wagon-tops of the three camps, made a serene and lovely scene. About ten o’clock, an immense drove of buffalo was seen running in the prairie to the southwest. Some of our party set off in pursuit on their horses, while twenty or thirty of us ran down to intercept them as they crossed the creek. A faint cry of Indians! Indians! Indians! from the camp reached those nearest the muleguard, and by them it was repeated and wafted on to us, who, hardly knowing whether to cache in the undergrowth, or to run for camp, stood for a moment undecided, and then ‘streaked it’ for the wagons. Turning our eyes to the furthest train on the hill, we perceived it in great commotion. Fifty Indians were charging among them with their lances, recoiling from the light volumes of smoke at times, and again swallowing up the little force with their numbers and shutting them in from our sight. Others were stampeding the oxen. After a conflict of several minutes, they retreated, bearing with them a dead warrior, behind the bluff hill which jutted boldly from the opposite shore.
“Our teamsters, during the fight, looked on with mouth and eyes open, in wonderment, regardless of their own cattle, still feeding in a deeply-fringed savanna. Tall cottonwood timber, overgrown with the luxuriant vine and thick-set underbrush, impervious to the eye, confined our stock to this secluded spot. The creek, half encircling it with a grand sweep, added its protection. A lightguard of three men watched the grazing herd. We were still congratulating ourselves on our escape, when from the guard, we heard the cry that the Indians were swimming the creek and driving off the oxen. More than half the camp started in full run to protect them. As we rounded the angle of the stream, yells were heard, then the dusky forms of a few Indians were seen; and, by the time we were within long gunshot, some sixty were among the luckless herd, goading them into a lumbering gallop. The colonel’s party led the van, and would have saved the cattle, had the teamsters supported them. But, they hanging back, we told them that their oxen might go to ——. Hurrying back to camp, Colonel Russell mounted his force and went in pursuit; but, in vain, we tried to repair the loss that negligence and cowardice had effected. Our ride rescued only thirty oxen, and gave us a view of the retreating savages, thrusting their lances into the remainder. In that unfortunate half hour, the train lost one hundred and sixty steers; which, at the purchase price—one half less than they were worth on the prairie—was a damage of four thousand dollars, together with a total loss of from five to seven thousand more, in the necessary abandonment of the wagons—the natural result of sending on the plains a set of green men, commanded by as raw a director, poorly and scantily armed with government blunderbusses, and meagerly furnished with from eight to fifteen rounds of cartridges each, which were often wasted on game or targets long before reaching the Indian country. And this was not the only instance of miserable economy, as the official reports show.
“Our train was in a sad condition; half a yoke to each wagon. Mr. Coolidge was really to be pitied—nearly four hundred miles from the States, with but two oxen to haul four large wagons, heavily loaded with robes and peltries. The colonel carried a few packs (as many as he was able); he bargained with one of the outward-bound trains to take some back to Mann’s Fort, and the rest he câched. The government people crowded their ‘kits’ and provision in three wagons; and, toward evening of the next day, we crossed the creek which had now subsided, leaving twenty-six wagons and any amount of extras, to the Indians and the wolves. Toward sundown, as we were hitching up to travel in the night, a party of dragoons, filing down the hill, made camp near. Lieutenant J. Love, commanding, was informed of the outrage, and promised satisfaction. We stopped a moment at the train, with which the first fight had occurred. One poor fellow, named Smith, from Van Buren County, Missouri, had been lanced seven times through the neck and breast. He killed the Indian that fell, while on his back and already wounded.”
Garrard’s trip on the plains ended in true storybook fashion, and, we can fancy, gave the boy material for reminiscence and story-telling for many a long year.
This book, and many another of the period, mention constantly, and in most familiar fashion, names that to old-timers in the West are familiar as household words—men whom, in their old age, we ourselves perhaps knew; men with whose sons and daughters we have lived as contemporaries. But the generation that knew these old-timers, Carson, Bridger, Jack Robinson, Jim and John Baker, Bent, St. Vrain, Sublette, Hugh Monroe, Ike Edwards, Bill Gary, Symonds, Beaubien, La Jeunesse, Rowland, and a hundred others whose names could be given, has for the most part passed away.
These names belong to the history of the early West. Soon they will be historic only, for those who have known them will also have crossed the Great Divide, and there will be none who can recall their personality.