Whenever they found buffalo in plenty the Mexicans would halt for several days and kill enough to supply their trainmen. They preserved the meat by cutting it into thin strips and hanging it on ropes about the corral until it was dried by the sun. But thus cured, it had a sour and disagreeable taste to me. The Mexicans would stew it with quantities of red pepper and devour it with great relish.
As we approached the valley of the Little Arkansas, where the view of the country was more extensive than any we had yet seen, there was no limit to the herds of buffalo, the face of the earth being covered with them. We camped at noon at the crossing of this stream. The buffalo were crossing the creek above us, moving westward, in bands of from twenty-five to a hundred or more. At the crossing they had a trail cut down through the steep banks of the stream three or four feet in depth.
But I had had enough of buffalo chasing, except when we were in need of fresh meat. It was too much like riding out into the pasture and killing your own domestic cattle. I found antelope hunting much better sport.
After Walnut creek, the next place of interest was Pawnee Rock near which many battles between the traders and the Indians had taken place. This bluff, facing the road on the right hand side, at a distance, perhaps, of a hundred yards, was of brown sandstone about fifty feet high, the bluff end of the ridge extending down to the river bottom. I climbed up the almost perpendicular face of the elevation, where I found many names cut in the soft stone—names of Santa Fé traders who had traveled the trail, among them that of Colonel M. M. Marmaduke, who crossed to Mexico as early as 1826, and was afterwards governor of Missouri, and James H. Lucas, a prominent and wealthy citizen of St. Louis.
We were not particularly apprehensive of Indian troubles, although we knew the Cheyennes were turbulent. Elijah Chiles, a brother of our captain, had been loading goods at Kansas City when we left—a train of twenty-six wagons for the Kiowas and Comanches—and was doubtless a few days’ drive behind us. But we kept on the lookout day and night; the guard around the cattle was doubled, and each teamster had a gun of some sort, which he kept strapped to the wagon bed, loaded and ready for service.
V.
Pestiferous Indians.
All the while we knew the Indians could wipe us out if they were determined to do so. In both trains there were not above sixty men, while there were, nearby, warriors by thousands.
A day’s journey beyond Pawnee Rock, we were visited by a hunting party of fifteen or twenty young Kiowa bucks, the first real “wild” Indians we had seen. They did not seem the least wild, however, but uncomfortably “tame,” and disposed to get very familiar on short acquaintance. They were evidently out on a lark, and disposed to make us the objects of their amusement that afternoon.
They scattered up and down the length of both trains, talking and laughing with the teamsters. Two of them took particular fancy to my friend Reece, riding on either side of him, taking hold of his arms and seeming to admire his long hair and the handsome horse he rode. Reece was not at all afraid of them and permitted no undue interference with his person or property.
Reece was no coward. While we were still in the dangerous region, he would ride for miles ahead of the train, alone, dismount and lie down to rest or sleep. When I said to him that he was incurring unnecessary risk of being killed by the Indians, he remarked that if they did kill him they could not rob him of much in this world.