We arrived in camp about the middle of the afternoon; although we could have covered the actual distance the nearest way in less than three hours. The boys were out of camp when we got there, but came in late in the evening, having killed and skinned thirteen buffaloes, while we were gone.
When Charlie and Jimmie drove out the next morning to get the hides, there was a young calf standing by one of the carcasses, its mother being one of the victims of yesterday's work. It still had the reddish color that all buffalo calves have in their infancy, not obtaining their regular blackish brown until in the fall of the year, when they are very fat, plump and stocky, and take on a glossy look. I have watched buffaloes many times during my three years' hunt, not with a covetous eye at the time, but to study the characteristics of the animal; and I do not remember ever seeing buffalo calves frisky, gamboling, and "cavorting" around in playful glee like domestic calves. Perhaps their doom had been transmitted to them! Yes, this was the pathetic side of the question. And thousands of these little creatures literally starved to death, their mothers being killed from the time they were a day old on up to the time they could rustle their own living on the range. Charlie killed this calf and salted the hide to take home for a rug. But, personally, I should want no such reminder of the last buffalo-grounds, especially one gotten in that way. Charlie and I settled up in this camp, I taking over the supplies of all kinds we then had on hand. He was to go to Dodge with the Wolf creek hides, make the sale of them, pay the freight bill, pay Jimmie my half of his salary, and send my share of the hunt in money to Fort Elliott, together with half that was due the Mexican for what hides he had skinned.
The day before Aiken was to be at Springer's, we broke camp, and all pulled for that place. When Aiken came along he informed me that there was fine hunting on the Washita, at the mouth of Gageby creek. Bidding Charlie Cook and young Dunlap good-by, the Mexican and I pulled for the mouth of Gageby by way of the Washita ranch, on the trail to Fort Elliott.
Here I met Rankin Moore, the owner of the place. This is the man who saved my life a little over a year after. Here I learned that my friends, the Woods, just a few days before, had sold and quitclaimed their interest near the mouth of Gageby to the Andersons from the Picket Wire country of southeast Colorado, who were preparing to start a horse-and-cattle ranch. The Woods had gone 200 miles southeast and off from the then last and only remaining frontier of the Old Southwest. I was disappointed in not again meeting these Samaritans of the prairies.
Pedro and I pulled down the Washita on the south side of the stream, and crossed the Gageby near where it flows into the former stream. Here we camped among some large scattering cottonwood trees.
We were now near the one-hundredth meridian, and close to danger-ground. We had been in this camp about ten days and had been going from three to eight miles for what hides we got. Some days we got five hides, and from that up to ten, which was the most we got any one day.
The tenth day, toward evening, as we were pegging out the six hides we got that day, a band of Cheyenne Indians rode into our camp, saying "How, John; heap buffalo." At the same time holding out a long official envelope toward me. We were both down on our hands and knees cutting holes, driving pegs, and stretching the hides. The suddenness of their arrival startled us. My gun was about twenty feet from me. As I rose up I started toward it, whereupon the Indian, holding out the envelope, said, "No, no shoot; heap good," and turning the envelope toward me, said excitedly: "You see 'em! You see 'em!"—pointing to the envelope and saying, "Big white man, heap chief." I picked up the envelope, which was unsealed, and found out that it contained a pass from the commanding officer at Fort Reno, Indian Territory, "For the bearer and his family to visit James Springer, on the Canadian river, northwest of Springer's. And they must follow the Canadian river, both going and coming, and are not to be absent from their agency but twenty days."
They were then ten miles south of the Canadian, on the Washita. After reading the pass and handing it back; I said, "wayno" (bueno), a Spanish word for good, known far and near by hunters, trappers, soldiers, cowboys, and all tribes of Indians from the Rio Grande to British America. But it was more commonly expressed by the word "skookum," by the Crows, Blackfeet, and extreme northern tribes. "Skookum" is Chinook for "good." When I said "wayno," he repeated the word after me; then, pointing just a little way upstream, he said: "Me campa!" Away they went with their travois outfit about 200 yards, and camped. There were twenty-two of them, men, women, and children. Three young bucks lingered at our camp, and examined and talked among themselves about everything that attracted their attention. My bundle of eagle-feathers was in sight and caught their eyes. There was a flour-sack wrapped around them; and one of the young fellows picked up the bundle and brought it to where I was now cooking supper. He talked his own language, whatever that was, and made signs that he wanted me to take the sack off. I did so, and he examined them closely; then he bundled them up and said, "You swap?"
I had learned a good deal of the universal Indian sign-language from the Osages, in southeastern Kansas, and had picked up a little more from the Navajoes that were camped a short time near where I was once in New Mexico.
I now commenced to make use of it; and by signs I told him I would trade. When I gave the sign for "yes," he stepped closer to me and in pantomime he asked, "How much?"