After I had been on meat straight for five days I broke for Goff's camp, early the next morning, only to find it abandoned, the hides all gone, too. I had agreed to be at all of our hide camps once each day, and not having time to go to Quinn's and return in time to make my rounds, and hoping for Charlie's return, I pulled back and made my regular trip without bread. Two days later I went to Arkansaw Jack's, and found Cornett there alone, on meat straight. I stayed all night with him, and made my pilgrimage to the camps the next day. And to sum it all up—I was on meat straight for fourteen days.
To make a long story short, Charlie was twenty-one days getting back to camp. But he had had a glorious spree. He got his check cashed at the post sutler's; paid all the boys up, and deposited all that was coming to me with the sutler, taking his receipt for it. He had flour, coffee, sugar, and lots of different kinds of delicacies, and a brand-new saddle for me.
He said: "I never intended to get drunk; but what could a fellow do? There were about thirty outfits camped on the Clear fork of the Brazos, under big pecan trees; and we all had a time. Oh, you'll hear about it; and I might just as well tell you. I got drunk one day and went to sleep under a big pecan tree, close to the edge of the river-bank, and some of the fellers set that stuffed panther in front of me. They had put glass marbles in the eye-holes, and when I waked up it took me by surprise, and I jumped back and fell over the bank into ten feet of water. And if they hadn't been there to fish me out I guess I'd have drowned my fool self."
All the time he was talking he was making bread, and flying around, hurrying everything along, demeaning himself and bemoaning his fate, as he called it. Said he did not want to get drunk; for he knew what his sufferings with remorse were when sobering up. "Now," said he, "please be as easy on me as you can. I know I have disappointed you; and I'm sorry for it."
Poor fellow! when I told him that I was one among many other unfortunates who could deeply sympathize with him, he broke down and cried like a child.
Charlie said he could not hear a thing of Hadley. And when we did hear from him, it was to learn that he had gotten off the Fort Griffin trail and had gone a long way south to the Phantom Hill country. And as he was a man that never was in a hurry and loved to talk as long as anyone would listen to him, it was no wonder he had taken seven weeks to go to Fort Griffin and back, about seventy-five miles. And when he did come he drove into camp with a four-mule team and new thimble-skein wagon, having traded his oxen and freight wagon for the rig he brought in.
He was by no means profuse in excuses for his long absence. All he said was that he missed his way, and had a chance to trade for the mule outfit and had to wait nearly three weeks for one of the mule teams to come from Fort Worth. After hearing this and how he bragged on his mules, it exasperated me so that I told him he was one man that I would not go to a dog-fight with, let alone trucking up with him on the frontier. He made no reply whatever.
Charlie called upon him for a statement for the hides he left camp with, and for an invoice for the stuff he brought back. All he could tell was that he got $325 for the hides; that the stuff he brought back cost $150; that he had given $100 of the balance that he got for the hides for boot between teams, and that he intended to make everything come out all right when he got through freighting the hides.
It did not take Charlie and Hadley long to settle up; and Mr. Hadley pulled out. He and Cyrus meeting in Griffin went into partnership in hunting. Charlie, by Hickey's request, had staked a trail from Quinn's to our camp. Every two miles or so he had driven a stake, on the highest places he passed over, with a thin box-lid nailed to it, and the words written on the lid: "To Hart's Camp."