Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains, Or, the Last Voice from the Plains / An Authentic Record of a Life Time of Hunting, Trapping, Scouting and Indian Fighting in the Far West

by William F. Drannan

CHAPTER XII.

COL. ELLIOTT KILLS HIS FIRST DEER, AND SECURES A FINE PAIR OF HORNS AS A PRESENT FOR HIS FATHER.—BECKWITH'S TAVERN.—SOCIETY.

Two weeks after the incidents related in the previous chapter, Capt. Mills came in with another train of emigrants, not having seen an Indian on the trip, and from this time on there was no danger of such trains going from that region through Beckwith Pass, and as the road was now broken by the other train, these emigrants could cross the Sierra Nevadas without a guide.

About this time four men with pack animals came along who claimed to be from Salt Lake. They reported that they had seen Indians one day traveling east of headquarters. I took two men and started out and was gone about a week, but did not see an Indian, or a track or sign of one, and when we returned the Colonel concluded that he had been misled by the packers.

Col. Elliott now ordered me to take fifty men, with two weeks' provisions, and go as far as we could with that amount of rations, or until we should meet some emigrants. We were gone about three weeks, but did not see either Indians or emigrants. The fact is, that it was getting so late in the fall that the Indians had all gone south, and the emigrants were not moving on the desert at that season.

On our return the Colonel had everything ready and we pulled out for San Francisco. We camped the first night at Steamboat Springs, a place that has since grown to be a famous health resort. On the second day we passed over the country where now stands Carson City, the capital of Nevada. At that time, this region, like all of that country then, was a wild, unsettled, sagebrush desert, or mountain wilderness.

The morning we left Eagle Valley the Colonel rode in advance of the column with me, and I saw there was something on his mind. In a little while he said he would like to kill a deer with big horns, so that he could send it—the horns—to his father in New York, who had never seen a deer, and he added that notwithstanding he—the Colonel—had been on the Pacific coast two years, he had never killed a deer in his life. I told him that I would fix it for him to get one the very next day, and he was as pleased as a child.

That night we camped by a big spring at the mouth of a great canyon, and about the spring stood a number of large pine trees. Many persons who had passed that way had carved their names in the bark of the trees, and among the names were two that were quite familiar to me. One of these was the name of Capt. Molujean—I wondered how he had done it without stuttering—and the other was the name of James Beckwith. On the same tree was written with lead pencil: "Sixty miles to Beckwith's Hotel."

On my favorite horse, Pinto, I rode out with the Colonel for a deer hunt. While riding along the canyon about two miles from where the command had camped, I saw a large doe crossing the canyon and coming down the hill toward us. I signaled the Colonel to halt and I shot the doe, breaking her neck, while sitting on my horse. I then told the Colonel to secrete himself behind a tree and he would soon see the male deer, and he would stand a good show to get a fine pair of horns. In a few moments two deer came tracking the one I had shot.

"Be ready, now," said I, "and when he stops let him have it." So when the deer were within about fifty yards I gave a keen whistle and they stopped, stock still. The Colonel fired and brought the big buck to the ground. The other, which was a small one, started to run, but I sent a bullet after it that made more venison.