After traveling about four miles I heard the report of a gun off to my left and rear. Upon bringing my field-glasses to a focus in the direction the report came from, I saw it was the Mexican. I said, "Charlie, you and Jimmie might go ahead to camp and maybe you'll get a chance to kill a few buffaloes. I'll mosey along slowly, and keep an eye on the Greaser; for he might get lost."
The two started on, and I watched the Mexican and saw that he was skinning an antelope. After he got through he threw the hide over his shoulder and started on south. When he passed a line east and west of me, I drove on, turning a little left from the route Charlie had taken. This I did in order to get closer to the Mexican; also to gain a high point of land ahead of me. I saw him skinning another antelope. All this was taking time; and as it was late when we left camp, it was now near noon, and I was hungry. I went to the hind end of the wagon, opened the mess-box, got some bread, took a spoon and dived into the apple-sauce. Eating out of the brass kettle from one side, I ate several large spoonfuls of it with my bread, then poured a quart cup full of water out of the keg, drank about half of it; then dived into the apple-sauce again, and ate until my appetite was perfectly satisfied.
I then got up on the spring seat and looked for the Mexican, but could not see him. Thinking now that he was acting in a sensible-like way, and that he had gone on south, I started ahead, and had not gone far until a strange sickening feeling came over me. The sun was boiling down and the heat radiating in front of me. I was getting dizzy-headed and "squeamish" in my stomach. I could hardly retain a sitting position, but before it was too late I stopped the team, climbed down and crawled under the wagon. Sick? Yes, unto death, as I then thought.
Whether I had gone to sleep or was unconscious I am unable to say. It was late in the afternoon before I came to a realization of anything. The first I knew was: The Mexican was bathing my face with a wet towel. He spoke fairly good English and said to me, "you are sick."
My sight coming to me, I asked him to get me some strong salt water, which I drank. It was an excellent emetic, for I was soon relieved of all that poisoned apple-sauce and sour-dough bread that I had eaten. Presently I could sit up, and the dizziness had passed; but I was, oh, so weak! Pedro told me he had come to me nearly an hour before. He had loosened the horses from the wagon and taken the wagon-sheet and hung it over the side of the wagon the sun was shining against, and had been washing my face, neck, and arms for some time. He said: "Now let me help you into the wagon and I will hitch up and we will go to camp." He helped me to get a reclining position, and started. After he had started, he asked me if I knew which side of us the other wagon-track was on. I told him, "To the right." When he found it he stopped and asked me how I was feeling. I replied, "Very sick. Don't you eat any of that apple-sauce. It has poisoned me." The fact was, I had been verdigris-poisoned from the brass kettle; and for several days I was an invalid without any appetite. And fifteen years elapsed before I could eat apple-sauce again.
It was now the breeding season of the buffaloes, which was July and August. And there was a constant muttering noise, night and day, made by the bellowing, or, more properly speaking, the roo roo-oo of the bulls, which in the individual case could not be heard in ordinary atmospherical conditions above a half-mile, but when uttered by the thousands has been known to be heard for twenty miles.
The mosquitoes punished our horses so severely at nights, and the green-head flies by day, that we decided to move southeast, to the top of the Washita divide. Charlie's left eye was gradually covering with a film, and he wanted to go home and have it operated on; so after we had moved to the divide, we established our camp on the prairie 200 yards from the water of a big spring that Buck Wood and I found the winter before when living in the cabin we had built. We left Jimmie and the Mexican here to do what they could with Charlie's and my gun. Taking the "pistolie" and Long Tom we went to the White Deer camp, and, loading all the hides on the two wagons, took them to Springer's ranch and sold them. We offered Springer our Wolf creek hunt, but he told us he did not have the money to pay for them; but, said he, "George Aikin's outfit will camp here to-night, going to Fort Elliott, with a load of Government supplies; and maybe you can get him to haul them to Dodge City."
It was nearly night, and while we were talking Aikin rode up. I had met him before, during the past winter, at Sweet Water, when I hired to Hart. I told him how we were situated, and he said that if we gave him the same rates as from Elliott and twenty dollars besides he would take all of the Wolf creek hides to Dodge City. He wanted to lay by and rest and graze up his teams at Commission creek, on his way back; and that he would load the train with hides at Sweet Water, less the number of wagons it required for our hides.
So it was settled that way. It was arranged that Charlie would be at Springer's when Aiken came back and pilot him to the hides. Aiken left us, saying he would be back to Springer's in eight days.
Charlie and I went back to our camp by way of the cabin; but it did not look natural. Nettles had grown up by one side of it ten feet high. A wild gourd vine had climbed over the roof and the wood-rats had piled one corner of the inside high up with chips, bark, sticks, turkey feathers, and pieces of bones that we had cracked to remove the marrow from. The big cottonwood grove was in full leaf; and as we drove on in the direction of camp we saw many flocks of young wild turkeys.