The professional hunters usually "stood in" with the red man, being possessed of some kind of magic that was never fully explained. In those days beaver, bear, buffalo, deer, antelope and other game abounded. The hunter usually had a hut or "dug-out" near a beaver dam, and it usually was well supplied with food and sometimes a squaw was the hunter's companion. Her relatives were sure of good treatment, and I presume for that reason the relatives were able to give the "squaw man" hunter protection. Still hunters were murdered, but not often.
Finally, along in July, after the grass had lost its sap and turned brown, one of the Buckskins saddled up his pinto horse one day, strapped a blanket, a pone of bread and a piece of bacon to his saddle, and giving free play to his Rowell spur, waved his hat and yelled as he dashed away:
"Good-bye, boys; see you again in a few days. I'm goin' to put an end to these raids."
His brother Buckskins thought he was crazy—some of them did. But one or two winked and looked wise; and about sixty hours later, when some of the "militia" had almost forgotten him, Buckskin rode up, unsaddled his pinto, pitched him in the ribs and said: "There now, old boy, go up the creek and enjoy yourself. Eat yourself to death, and I'll know where to find you when I want you. No Indian will get you."
When the boys crowded around him he vouchsafed this much information:
"From a point twenty miles east of this spot to a spot twenty miles west of Fort Laramie—on the north side of the Platte—as far as the eye can reach in a northerly direction, and you know that's considerable distance, there is just one charred mass—every blade of grass has been burned."
There was no more trouble that season. No feed for the Indian ponies within a hundred miles of the fort to the north of the river.