Freed's camp was five miles up the river from ours. Al. Waite and Frank Perry were three miles down the same stream; and north of us three miles, at some springs, was Dirty-face Jones.
Many times during the winter we visited each other's camps and passed many pleasant evenings in the buffalo-hide tepees or dugouts, as the case might be, exchanging experiences of the hunt; commenting upon the events occurring in the outside world when we occasionally heard of them. All this, interspersed with story-telling and song-singing, until the "wee sma' hours."
The turkeys in this region were just the opposite from those about our last winter's camp near the Salt Fork of the Brazos. Here they were tender, juicy and sweet; but not nearly so tame. But it would have been a very poor hunter indeed that in an hour or two's absence from camp could not bring in two or more of the big fat prizes.
This was a beautiful, mild winter, with the exception of two northers, one in November, the other in February, each lasting two or three days. On Christmas Day, and for several days before, the days were quite warm and the nights clear, with bright starlight, and pleasant. The sun usually rose from a perfectly clear sky, and passed down behind the horizon leaving a soft golden halo in its wake. This surely was the American Hunters' Paradise. And they were winning the Great Southwest. We hunters often talked about the future of this great, vast uninhabited region, with all its salt, gypsum, alkali and strongly impregnated sulphur waters, scattered over this vast expanse of territory 200 miles in width and 350 miles long, in western Texas alone. There were thousands of beautiful fresh-water springs of cool, pure water, and many babbling brooks where several varieties of fish abounded.
West of the pecan and oak shinnery ("cross-timber") belt, even on to the eastern escarpment of the Llano Estacado, were thousands of beautiful cottonwood groves, many wild plum bushes, and much mesquite.
CHAPTER VIII.
Indian Rumors.—Nigger-Horse Runs Away.—A Close Midnight Call.—A Comanche Shoots at Me.—Rankin Moore Kills the Indian's Horse.—Diabolical Deeds.—Killing and Scalping of Sewall.—We Dug His Grave with Butcher-knives.—The Pocket Cañon Fight.—Hosea.—They Scatter Like Quails.—Plains Telegraphy.
We hunters were optimistic enough to predict a wonderful future for a region of such delightful climate and such fertile soil. In March we sold our hides to Charles Rath, who sent his agent, George West, to follow up the hunters with two large freight trains to bring back the hides they got that winter. But a dozen such trains could not haul the hides that the hunters had in their many camps west from the one-hundredth meridian to the New Mexico line and south to the Brazos river. It was a red-letter killing and the slaughter reached its high-tide mark that winter and spring. The summer of 1876 I hunted with fair success in different parts of the Panhandle of Texas. But that year not many buffaloes went north to the Cimarron. They were giving ground. The terrible slaughter of the past two years had shortened their annual pilgrimage from the Cimarron to the Platte, 500 miles. In October I was back on the breaks of Red river. Army officers informed us that the Indians were restless. They had heard of Sitting Bull's annihilation of Custer's Seventh Cavalry, and it was in their hearts to emulate his and Gall's warriors. George Whitelaw with two men, Hank Campbell with two men, and Crawford and I, agreed to camp together for mutual protection. We found some excellent water-holes about three miles north of Red river, in rough ground. Here we pitched camp and stayed until the last of November, getting all told 1600 hides from here.