"No, no," we told him, one and all of the same voice; "you make the detail. We will stay organized until the stock question is settled. You take one-third of the men then and go to Rath's Store. Take all the extra stock along and wait for us to come in."
He took Carr, Keyes, Cornett, Squirrel-eye, the two Englishmen, the negro soldier, the Boston boy, and poor Benson, whom we had to watch to keep him from wandering off; as he would keep saying, "I must go and find the boys." Had he suffered during his ninety-six hours of thirst?
I was one of the party who went to the sand-hills.
We separated, all three parties leaving camp at once, with "So-long to you," and "So-long to you," calling back to each other by name. "Don't let the Quohadas get those horses again." "Yes, and look out for the pale-face rustlers, too, Harvey." This last was an admonition with a meaning. For the cattle-men along the border had given us the names of a few professional horsethieves.
We were two days going back to the sand-hills. We followed the trail the Indians had made in their flight for Fort Sill. When we got fairly out of the breaks and on top of the "yarner," we met Tonkawa Johnson and his five scouts. From him we learned the condition of Nolan's command. Johnson had been sent out to hunt for that part of Nolan's missing pack train which was finally found at Laguna Rica.
We entered the Blue sand-hills where the Indians left them. After following the trail about seven miles we came to the place where they had lived since Captain Lee captured their camp at Laguna Plata. We passed by horses, mules and ponies for two miles before we came to the camp. We stayed in these sand-hills for three days. We went out to where we had abandoned the trail on the evening of the 28th of July. Seven miles on an air line would have led us to their camp. Twice that distance was the trail we abandoned, the trail leading past their camp on the north some five miles, and looping back again. We could not but admire their strategy. We rounded up in these sand-hills 107 head of stock, and drove them to Rath, where the other boys who had followed the Indian trail to the Brazos had arrived two days before us.
We placed all the stock in one herd, and sent out word in every direction for the hunters to come and get their stock. Rath boarded us at the restaurant until we got our outfits rigged up for the fall and winter hunt. In September we scattered over the range from the South Concho to the Pease river, as secure in our camps as if we were in a quiet and peaceful Quaker neighborhood, so far as Indians were concerned.
The summer of 1877 is on record as being the last of the Comanches in the rôle of raiders and scalpers; and we hunters were justly entitled to credit in winding up the Indian trouble in the great State of Texas, so far as the Kiowas and Comanches were concerned. Those Indians had been a standing menace to the settlement of 90,000 square miles of territory in Texas and New Mexico.