And to-day, 1907, it is a pleasing thought to the few surviving hunters of the old Southwest to know that the entire country of the then vast unsettled region is now dotted over with thousands of peaceful, prosperous homes.
I pulled out of Rath September 21st for the head of North Concho; and that winter hunted along the eastern edge of, and on, the Staked Plains.
The last great slaughter of the buffaloes was during the months of December, 1877, and January, 1878, more than one hundred thousand buffalo-hides being taken by the army of hunters during that fall and winter. That winter and spring many families came onto the range and selected their future homes, and killed buffaloes for hides and meat. More meat was cured that winter than the three previous years all put together.
In the spring of 1877 but few buffalo went north of Red river. The last big band of these fast-diminishing animals that I ever saw was ten miles south of the Mustang Spring, going southwest. They never came north again. And I afterward learned that the remnant of the main herd that were not killed crossed the Rio Grande and took to the hills of Chihuahua in old Mexico. This last view was in February, 1878. During the rest of the time that I was on the range, the hunters could only see a few isolated bands of buffaloes. And if one heard of a herd which contained fifty head he would not only look, but be surprised.
In May the hunters were leaving the range. Some went to the San Juan mines, some to the Black Hills, and some "back to the States," as they would say.
Many picked out one of the many fine locations that he had had an eye on for a year, two years, or three years, as the case might be, and he would settle down to ranching. In a few years, personally I lost track of them. But in memory, never.
Speaking of the members who took part in the battle of March 18th, 1877, and were also members of the Forlorn Hope: I can now look back in my evening of life, with very many pleasant recollections. It was the most democratic body of men imaginable. Different in religious views, politics, financial standing, and in the social scale of life, yet, as the phrase goes, all "common as old boots." There were men with a classical education; some there were who could not read, write, or cipher; but they could name the brands and could tell you the peculiarities of the owners from the Rio Grande to the Red river. One of the Englishmen, as we called the two whose camp was literally destroyed, and who were with us in the Casa Amarilla fight, also a member of the "Forlorn Hope," was not wholly English, for Scotch blood flowed in his veins. He was a poet. He never told the author, but it came to him second-hand, that Harry Burns, the Scotch-Englishman, was a descendant of Bobbie Burns, the famous Scotch poet. His verses composed and published in the Dodge City Times, addressed to the "hunters" after the ninety days' scout, and which are reproduced in this book, are timely, and surely will be appreciated by the hunters of those days.
Another hunter, a "Prodigal Son," also composed a few verses when he was leaving western Kansas to hunt in Texas. The words were sung all over the range with as much vim as the old-time "John Brown's Body." It had a very catchy tune, and with the melody from the hunters' voices it was beautiful and soul-inspiring to me. One stanza and the chorus is all that I can now recall of it. It ran thus:
"I love these wild flowers, in this fair land of ours,
I love to hear the wild curlew scream