He said, "All right."
I took three or four steps backward, and, bringing a thorn-bush between the eagle and myself, I started across a little valley and came up under the bluff where the eagle was standing on the crag. I scaled the gypsum butte and got up near the summit and peeped over, and there he was, not more than fifty yards from me. I drew a fine bead, and fired. He plunged over the crag and rolled to the bottom—dead.
I picked him up and went on into camp. I had heard that eagle-oil was the best kind of gun-oil. He was large, very fat, and had fine plumage. We saved all the oil for our guns, and I bundled the feathers together and kept them until the next summer, when I traded them to a young Cheyenne would-be warrior for a pinto pony that the Quohada Comanches afterward stole from me in the spring of 1877.
When Cyrus and I got to camp we found Charlie, our hunter, there. He brought us good word for more hunting. It was understood that we were to move camp the next morning, cross the Brazos, and go to near the summit of the divide, between it and Croton creek, where he had found a spring of nearly fresh water, with several pools below it. Speaking of Croton creek, it surely was properly named. For a sudden, immediate and effective laxative, it was a whole apothecary shop.
This camp was nearly four miles from the first camp, and here we had fair hunting until the latter part of March. Then one morning on going to our lookout, not a buffalo could be seen. We were all satisfied, for we wanted a rest and change.
At this camp we got 906 hides, and I had skinned 407 of them, thereby earning $101.75.
We had run short of primers a few days previous to this lull in the hunt, and hearing big guns every day in different directions from us, Hadley was delegated to hunt up a camp, in the hope of getting enough primers to tide us over until Hadley could make a trip to Fort Griffin, where there was a supply store. The first camp he found was the Carr and Causey outfit, which had killed 3700 buffaloes. They were out of flour, and were getting low on all kinds of ammunition except primers; but were looking for a man whom they had sent to Griffin to return in a short time.
"Yes, they would divide primers if we would divide flour."
So the exchange was made, they getting fifty pounds of flour, and we getting one thousand primers.