CHAPTER IX
BUFFALO NEAR THE BIG BEND
That afternoon we reached Council Grove, on the west bank of Neosho River. It was then a place of less than a hundred and fifty inhabitants but an important business point—the outpost of Kansas settlements and the last town, going westward, until Denver, Colorado, was reached. Travellers going to the plains usually halted here to lay in any requisites for their trip that might have been overlooked in starting from the Missouri River and also for last repairs on wagons and for horseshoeing.
The tires on our hind wheels had become a little loose, and we decided to have them shrunk and reset, so we camped by a blacksmith shop near the centre of the village, and soon had the blacksmith at our work, which he finished before dark.
Making an early start next morning, we rolled out, nooned at Diamond Springs, fifteen miles from the Grove, where there was but one family, and at evening camped at Lost Springs, thirty miles from Council Grove, where Jack Costillo's ranch was the only habitation. So long as the road and weather were fine we wished to make up the time lost in being delayed by the jayhawkers and lengthened our drives accordingly.
We were now fairly launched on the plains and would see little more timber and no habitations of white men except an occasional trading ranch at the crossing of some creek along the road. We were nearing the eastern edge of the buffalo range.
The road from Fort Riley, that we had formerly travelled in going out to the Arkansas River and back, enters the Santa Fé road here at Lost Springs. At this camp there was no timber and no running water—merely a series of water-holes strung along a prairie hollow. This had long been a well-known camping ground; but where the springs were from which it takes the name I never knew, for I never saw any.
We pitched our tent near where the Fort Riley road enters the Santa Fé and after supper attended to the usual camp work. After we had groomed and fed our animals the Irishman and I strolled up to the ranch to renew old acquaintance with the proprietor, Jack Costillo, also an Irishman, whom we had previously known as a soldier in the Mounted Rifle Regiment in New Mexico.
Costillo was delighted to meet us again and, of course, set out his best for us. We spent a couple of hours very pleasantly talking over old times with him and then returned to our camp. As we walked along, thinking of the Italian name borne by this man, who, as Jack said, "wore the map of Ireland on his face," I remarked:
"When I hear such names as O'Shaughnessy, Finnegan, or McCarthy given for an Irishman, they seem natural and Irish enough, but now and then I find an Irishman with what seems to be a very un-Irish name, such as Costillo's, for instance. How do you account for these misfit names, Jack?"