As the captain with his company turned off to their stable, Bill, Jack, and I, accompanied by the six-mule team carrying our plunder, moved on through the garrison and established our camp about a half mile below, in a snug bend of Pawnee Fork.
After unloading our stuff from the wagon, we sent the team back to the garrison and then set about pitching our tent and making ourselves comfortable, for we expected to have to remain here several days, partly on Tom's account and partly to wait for Kitchen's train, which was coming in from New Mexico, by which we expected to ship our wolfskins to Leavenworth, provided we did not sell them here.
After getting everything in shape, leaving Jack to mind camp and cook dinner, Bill and I returned to the post to call on Tom at the hospital, to release Found, who was still locked in Bill's room, and to bring our mule team back to camp.
We found the old man still badly crippled from the wound in his thigh, but the doctor thought he would be able to travel in a few days.
The faithful dog was glad to see us and to be released. He was quite hungry, for he had had nothing to eat since the feed I gave him in the dugout before starting him with the message to Bill.
As I was hitching up our mule team at Saunders' company stable, the captain came by and insisted on my going with him to the commissary and loading in some rations and feed which he had procured a requisition for, to replace the supplies that his men and horses had consumed at Camp Coyotelope.
The work of settling up our business affairs and getting everything ready for the return trip now devolved upon me, though I had the benefit of consultation with Tom on all matters of importance.
As already stated, our winter's catch of wolfskins numbered something over three thousand. These were all dried and baled in one of Weisselbaum's warerooms. About one fourth of these pelts were of the large gray wolves, or "lobos," as the Mexicans call them, which, at that time, were rated on the plains at one dollar and twenty-five cents each. The other three fourths were coyotes, worth seventy-five cents each. Besides these, there were several bales of the skins of the little yellow fox, worth twenty-five cents each. At these figures, the entire lot should bring us something over twenty-six hundred dollars. On Tom's advice I offered the whole to Weisselbaum for twenty-five hundred, but he seemed to think he could get them for less and held off.
One day when negotiations had reached this stage, Kitchen's mule train rolled in and camped near us. This brought business to a focus with Weisselbaum and he immediately hurried down to our camp, accepted my offer, and wrote me out a check on Clark & Gruber[E] (M. E. Clark & E. H. Gruber), bankers of Leavenworth city, for twenty-five hundred dollars. In addition to this, I drew from his safe the three hundred and fifty dollars that we had deposited with him.
It is a well-known fact that in the dry, pure atmosphere of the plains, flesh wounds heal with astonishing rapidity. It may have been, in Tom's case, that the satisfactory closing up of our business affairs had something to do with it, but about this time Jack and I were astonished as well as pleased to see Tom come limping into camp and report for duty.