“Finished?” reiterated Bartlett. “Then who is going to carry the game home?” He pointed to the carcase-crowded valley.
“Oh, those are for the coyotes and wolves,” said the oldest chief contemptuously.
“Then why kill so many?”
The chief pointed to one of the blocks of meat.
“That is all that we care to eat; and just now we have no need of hides or hoofs, so we can afford to leave those.”
The meat that had been cut away was just the “hump” of the animal; the raised portion of the withers. In his old age, Mr. Bartlett was not surprised to hear naturalists and sportsmen bewailing the scarcity of bisons after what he saw that day, and on many subsequent occasions. The Indians had surrounded and slain a whole herd, with the wanton love of destruction that the child and the savage usually display. They were in the habit of using the horns for spear-heads, and the hoofs to make the glue with which they fixed their arrow-points; but here were enough horns and glue to equip a dozen regiments of Indians—and all left to waste and rot.
The ferry was reached before dark; the Indians were rewarded with bits of finery, and a plug or two of tobacco, and went on their way.
As the waggon neared the “Llano Estacado,” 222 Bartlett began to hear news of redskins who might not accord him so amiable a reception. At the Red River tributary of the Mississippi, he was told that several American travellers had been murdered in the valleys and passes by Apaches, who were popularly supposed to be a sort of hired assassins of the Mexicans at this time. The tidings did not sound encouraging, but he had now travelled through about twelve hundred miles of Indian territory without encountering so much as an angry word or a petty theft, and he was not prepared to go out of his way on account of a mere rumour.
He had scarcely crossed the first part of the hill-ridge that encloses the celebrated Llano, when his waggon broke down without the least warning. Tools were got out and the damage examined, and the axle-bar of the hind wheels was found to be so injured as to necessitate repairs that would take a good deal of time.
Jim, the black, had just unharnessed the horses, and was pegging them down, when one of the teamsters reported a small batch of Apaches overtaking them, as though they might have followed the waggon from a distance.