Campbell's outfit and my own went west about six miles and camped at the head of a draw running through a large flat down to Red river. Whitelaw went back to Fort Elliott. There were, in this camp, Hank Campbell, Frank Lewis, "Crazy" Burns, Willis Crawford, and myself, the night of the 15th December, when a heavy blinding snow-storm came on. This snow commenced falling as darkness set in; by daylight it had ceased, and there were seven inches of snow on the ground.
Sometime that night, while we were all wrapped in our warm beds and sound asleep, Old Nigger Horse, with 170 Comanche warriors, together with their families, passed by less than 200 feet from us, running away from Fort Sill. They were being followed by two companies of soldiers that would have overtaken them if Miles, Custer, or Crook had been there. This is my opinion.
NIGGER HORSE (COMANCHE CHIEF) AND HIS HORSE.
The next morning "Crazy" Burns, as he was called, was the first one up, and while he was building the morning fire the soldiers appeared, and they told us they had abandoned the Indian trail on account of the weather. This act alone caused the loss of many lives of the hunters. These Indians kept on south and went into camp for the rest of the winter. The place they selected was a pocket-cañon just south of the mouth of Thompson's cañon, and is so located on the old maps.
It was an excellent place for a defensive fight, being located as it was immediately under the escarpment of the Staked Plains. They stayed here until the last of February. Literally they were perfectly hidden. But few hunters were that far south at the time, and none that far west. The fact developed afterward that the nearest hunter's camp was twelve miles from them. This was Billy Devins's, northeast of them. Five miles northeast of Devins's was the ill-fated Marshall Sewall's camp.
In the latter part of February these Indians began murdering and pillaging in earnest. But a few days before the first hunters were disturbed, they had evidently scouted the country well, for there were single Indians seen in different places far apart at the same time.
A few days after Nigger Horse and his band had passed by our camp, Rankin Moore came along with his outfit and told us he had not seen a buffalo since he had left Fort Elliott. We had not seen one for the last two days. So we agreed to pull south for the Brazos country. We crossed the Red river at the same place the Indians did, and followed their trail for ten miles, when it turned off more to the southwest; but we went on south. Moore had agreed to go to a certain place on the Salt Fork and camp there until Benson's outfit came along, Benson and he both having been at the place the winter before. This place was about ten miles up the river from where Arkansaw Jack's camp was the winter of my first hunt.
The evening we arrived at this place I took my horses down a broad ravine and hobbled them, nearly a quarter of a mile from camp, where there was better grass than at or near camp.