Capt. W. F. Drannan, Chief of Scouts, As Pilot to Emigrant and Government Trains, Across the Plains of the Wild West of Fifty Years Ago

by William F. Drannan

The morning of the third day after I found him, he seemed more rational than he had since I had been with him. That morning he asked where we were going, and when I told him we were going to Bent's Fort, where his comrade was waiting for us, he seemed surprised. He did not remember that I had told him how the herder at the Fort had found him, and that it was through his faithful struggle to get help for his starving friends that I had started out to find them. When I told it all to him again, he sat and cried like a child.

He said: "How can I ever pay this friend for suffering so much for me, and you, a stranger, for seeking to find me in the trackless wilderness?"

And then he told me what each of his comrades said before they died.

He said they were all raised together in one town in Missouri and were as dear to each other as though they had been brothers, and all their parents were in Denver, Colorado, where the four sons had left them when they started out prospecting for gold, and he said with tears in his eyes, "How can I ever tell their mothers what we all suffered, and how the two died and their bodies left laying unburied?"

After we had talked as long as I thought was best for him to dwell on the sad events, I cheered him up as well as I could. I assisted him to mount the horse I had selected for him to ride, and we pulled out on the trail for the Fort.

He was so weak that we could not ride over ten miles a day, and we were seven days going back the same distance that I had traveled in two when I struck out to find them.

The day before we reached Bent's Fort, I shot a young deer just as we were going into camp, and as he was eating some of it, he said it was the sweetest meat he'd ever eaten.

We landed at Bent's Fort on the evening of the seventh day after I started back with him. His comrade was sitting outside of the Fort when we came in sight, and when he saw us he hurried to meet us, and when we were in speaking distance of each other he said:

"Bill, I had given up all hope of ever seeing you again," and he did not wait for his friend to dismount, but reached up and took him off in his arms, and men who were used to all kinds of sights turned away with tears in their eyes at the sight of that meeting.

After they were seated together in the Fort and were more composed, they began talking about how they should tell the parents of the comrades who had died in the mountains.