Capt. McKee bought the grub and then settled with the boys, and then he came to me and said, "Now we will settle between ourselves."
We walked a few yards away from camp and sat down under a large tree, and he showed me a little book where he had everything set down in black and white, and when all was reckoned up there were twenty two hundred and eighty dollars to divide between us two.
As soon as we had divided the money, he said, "Now, are you willing to do the scout work and take the lead of this company? You are the only one in the outfit who understands the duties of a scout. I know this work will very often place you in positions that will be anything but pleasant, but someone must take the chances, and your knowledge of the Indians and his ways of fighting makes you more suitable than any one else in the company."
I said, "I will accept the position, Capt., if I can have the two men that have been with me in the last two hunts, and one more man. And another thing I want understood is that we four men will be exempt from all camp duty and have the privilege of going and coming any time we please without being interfered with."
He said, "All that suits me, and I will see that you are also exempt from cooking. Your meals will be prepared for you from this on."
Capt. McKee now called the men I had selected, and one of the others to come to him, and when they came, he told them of the arrangements we had made and told them they must look to me for their instructions in the future if they were willing to accept the positions as assistants. They all said they were willing to undertake the job if I was willing to teach them what I wanted them to do. One of them said, "Mr. Drannan, when I make a mistake, I want you to tell me of it at once, for I want to do right in everything as much as you will want me to."
I answered that we would commence by learning the private signals to be used when in the Indian country, which I would teach them tomorrow night.
After we went into camp the next morning, just as we were getting ready to pull out, two men came and told us that the Indians were doing a great deal of damage about seventy-five miles in a southwestern direction from Fort Worth. He said they had been making raids on the settlements every few days for several weeks and had killed several people, and the settlers were kept in a constant fear day and night.
As the Capt. was well acquainted all over the country, he knew just where to direct our course, and we pulled out in that direction making as good time on the way as possible.
The second night after we left Fort Worth, we camped on the edge of one of the settlements where the Indians had been making so much trouble. As soon as we were settled in camp, I rode to a house that was perhaps a half a mile from us to get some information regarding the Indians. The man of the house said that the Indians had come every ten days and sometimes oftener, and, said he, "The Indians do not try to kill the people as much as they did to steal the stock or anything else that they could get their hands on."