CHAPTER XVII. UNCLE DICK WOOTON.
Immediately after Kit Carson, the second wreath of pioneer laurels, for bravery and prowess as an Indian fighter, and trapper, must be conceded to Richens Lacy Wooton, known first as "Dick," in his younger days on the plains, then, when age had overtaken him, as "Uncle Dick."
Born in Virginia, his father, when he was but seven years of age, removed with his family to Kentucky, where he cultivated a tobacco plantation. Like his predecessor and lifelong friend Carson, young Wooton tired of the monotony of farming, and in the summer of 1836 made a trip to the busy frontier town of Independence, Missouri, where he found a caravan belonging to Colonel St. Vrain and the Bents, already loaded, and ready to pull out for the fort built by the latter, and named for them.
Wooton had a fair business education, and was superior in this respect to his companions in the caravan to which he had attached himself. It was by those rough, but kind-hearted, men that he was called "Dick," as they could not readily master the more complicated name of "Richens."
When he started from Independence on his initial trip across the plains, he was only nineteen, but, like all Kentuckians, perfectly familiar with a rifle, and could shoot out a squirrel's eye with the certainty which long practice and hardened nerves assures.
The caravan, in which he was employed as a teamster, was composed of only seven wagons; but a larger one, in which were more than fifty, had preceded it, and as that was heavily laden, and the smaller one only lightly, it was intended to overtake the former before the dangerous portions of the Trail were reached, which it did in a few days and was assigned a place in the long line.
Every man had to take his turn in standing guard, and the first night that it fell to young Wooton was at Little Cow Creek, in the Upper Arkansas valley. Nothing had occurred thus far during the trip to imperil the safety of the caravan, nor was any attack by the savages looked for.
Wooton's post comprehended the whole length of one side of the corral, and his instructions were to shoot anything he saw moving outside of the line of mules farthest from the wagons. The young sentry was very vigilant. He did not feel at all sleepy, but eagerly watched for something that might possibly come within the prescribed distance, though not really expecting such a contingency.
About two o'clock he heard a slight noise, and saw something moving about, sixty or seventy yards from where he was lying on the ground, to which he had dropped the moment the strange sound reached his ears. Of course, his first thoughts were of Indians, and the more he peered through the darkness at the slowly moving object, the more convinced he was that it must be a blood-thirsty savage.