The next morning Capt. McKee said he wanted to have a talk with me when I was at leisure. I said, "Now is your time, Capt." So we started out for a walk. We walked in silence. The Capt. seemed to be thinking. At last he said, "Mr. Drannan, have you made any definite arrangements with Col. Chivington regarding taking the train through the Comanche country?" I answered, "No sir, I have not."

"What will you charge him if you take the job?"

I said, "Capt., I am not anxious to take the job, but if I take it, I shall charge five hundred dollars for my services this time, and I would like you to tell the Col. so when you go back to Santa Fe. I think this amount will be very reasonable from the fact that there will be no more expense. If he had to feed forty or fifty men and pay them wages besides, he would find quite a difference, and after all, they would be no protection to the train, and they and the drivers also would be scalped before they had passed one Indian village. So taking all things into consideration I think that Col. Chivington acted rather close with me, more close than I shall allow him to do again." Capt. McKee said that he thought my charges were very modest, and he continued, "There is another thing I want to talk to you about, provided you go with this train. What do you propose doing when you come back?"

I answered, "I am open for anything that is honorable and has enough money in it to pay me."

He said, "I intended to make up a company soon to go down on the Pan Handle country in Texas, and I expect to go down as far as Fort Worth. I would like you to join me. What do you think of the idea, Mr. Drannan?"

"What is your object in going down there, Capt.?" I asked. He said, "Western Texas is settling up very fast, and the Apache Indians are very bad there. They are murdering the white people every day, and something must be done to protect them from the Red fiends. I have seen enough of your methods with the Indians to satisfy me that you understand them and how to manage them better than anyone I have ever met with, and I am sure you would suit me better than anyone that I know. If you will join me in this undertaking, the state of Texas will pay us well for what we do towards protecting the settlers. I believe the Apache Indians are the most vicious as well as the most treacherous of any tribe of Indians that ever infested the frontier from the fact that they are so mixed with the Mexicans and never have been conquered."

I said, "Capt. McKee, if I take the train back and you are not gone when I come back here, I will join you in this trip to Texas, or if you will leave word where I can find you, if it is within two or three hundred miles of here, I will come to you."

We turned back to the Fort with the understanding that, in case he left the Fort without me, he would leave word where I could come to him.

CHAPTER VIII

The next morning my packers and myself were up early and ready to be off for the Indian village. I told the boys to be sure and take a plenty of rope as all the hides would have to be baled before they could be packed on the horses. One man said, "I have four sacks full of rope, and I reckon that will be enough."