Here I found Mr. Hickey, the hide-buyer, whom I had expected to find in Fort Griffin. There were twelve thousand hides piled here, two thousand of them that the two Quinn Brothers had killed and traded for. The rest belonged to different outfits, who had made the entire winter's hunt within a radius of twenty-five miles of here. Hickey met the owners of these hides that day and purchased them.
After talking with three of the hunters who were camped there for the night, and getting from them some pointers on Hickey's ideas of classification and his general methods of dealing, I approached him the next morning, by saying, "Mr. Hickey, I understand you are from Leavenworth, Kansas."
He said: "Yes; do you know anything about the place?"
I told him, "Not since the Rebellion."
This brought all those present into nearly an hour's conversation about the past and down to the present. All agreed that there was a hopeful and bright future for our country.
Hickey asked me where my hide camp was and how many hides I had. I told him I was working for Charles Hart; that we were the so-called northern hunters; that we had about 3000 prime hides; that we were assured by Rath & Wright, of Dodge City, that they would come after our hides and give us top prices, no matter how far south we hunted.
He was a quick, impulsive, genial Irishman, who did not want Rath & Wright to get a hide south of the Red river. He asked me if I would pilot him to our camp. I told him I would; and that there were several other camps within gun-hearing of ours.
In a few moments we were saddled up and off. I found him to be a good conversationalist, well informed, and in possession of knowledge upon the latest current events. He said all of Lobenstein & Co.'s hides went to Europe; that the English army accouterments of a leather kind were being replaced with buffalo leather, on account of its being more pliant and having more elasticity than cow-hide; that buffalo leather was not fit for harness, shoes, or belting; but for leather buffers it could not be excelled. As we were passing a place where lay eighty-odd carcasses, he halted, and for the space of five or more minutes, rapidly reeled off in that rich clarion Irish brogue, as my recollection serves me now, something like this:
"Well: the howly smoke! Did I iver see such wanton distruction? No regard whativer to economy! What beautiful combs and other ornaments thim horns would make for the ladies! The money, mon alive, in the glue! What a harvest for an upholsterer in that hair on their heads! Ivery pound of that mate could and should be utilized at a fine commercial advantage. The very bones have a good money value for compost and sugar-refining. More than one thousand dollars going to waste before our eyes." "Mon alive," he said, turning to me, "this will amount to multiplied millions between the Arkansas and Rio Grande rivers. It is all right and all wrong; right to kill and get the hides; wrong to waste the carcass!"