the creeks.
We had grub enough, so we fought shy of folks, watched our back trail, and moved
along about thirty miles or so each day. Arbuckle had been deserted by the army,
but there were a few Indians camped there, trading horses and such. They were a
mixed lot, Seminoles, Choctaws, and Creeks mostly, with a few Pottawattomies. We
bought some coffee from them, and I traded for a beaded hunting shirt tanned
almost white, a beautiful job.
“Be careful,” a Creek warned us, “the Comanches have been raiding south and west
of here. They ran off some horses only a few miles west.”
Glancing around at Judas, I asked, “Can you shoot?”
“I can, suh.”
Well, that, was enough for me. He was no spring chicken but the first time I
seen him top off a bronc I knew he’d been there before. He told me he could ride
and he could, so when he told me he could shoot, I believed him.
As we rode out of Arbuckle and headed west up the Washita, I dropped back beside
him. “Do you know any more about what happened than we do?”
“I doubt it, suh. Angus was slave to Mr. Pierre. Angus liked him, and Mr. Pierre
was both a gentleman and a kind man. Angus was of an adventurous spirit, suh. He
was a fine hunter and a man who liked the wilderness.”
“Did you talk to him after plans were made to go west?”
“Once, only. He had met Mr. Sackett, your father, and liked him. Your father had
very kindly advised him as to what he might encounter, the best clothing, and as
to caution in all things.
“May I also say, suh, that he did not like Mr. Swan, and none of us cared for
Andre Baston. Do not mistake it, suh, Mr. Baston is a very dangerous man.”
We saw occasional antelope, and twice we encountered small herds of buffalo, but
we did not hunt. This was Indian country and for the moment we did not need
meat. We neither wanted to shoot their game, for this was on land allotted to
them, nor to attract attention to us from wild Indians.
Several times we cut their sign. Comanches … at least a dozen riding together.
“Raiders,” Orrin said, and I agreed. Only warriors, no women, no travois.
This was all Indian country, about half wild and half friendly, and the friendly
Indians suffered as much from the wild ones as the white men would. It was the
old story of nomadic peoples raiding the settlements, and it has happened the
world over.
Our camps at night were hidden, meals hastily prepared, and the fires kept to
coals or to nothing at all. Judas proved an excellent camp cook, which pleased
me. I could cook but didn’t favor it much, and Orrin was no better than me. As
for the Tinker, he kept silent on the subject.
We were coming up to the site of old Fort Cobb when Orrin, who was riding point,
suddenly pulled up. A horse nickered, and then a dozen Indians rode over the
crest of the hill.
Sighting us they pulled up sharp, but I held my hand up, palm out, as a signal
we were peaceful, and they rode up. They were Cheyennes, and they had been
hunting along Cache Creek. By the look of things they had been successful, for
they were loaded down with meat.
They warned us of a war party of Kiowas over west and south and swapped some
meat with us for some sugar. We sat our horses and watched them go, and I
suggested we swing north.
For the next few days we switched directions four or five times, riding north to
Pond Creek, following it for a day or so, then a little south to confuse anybody
following us, and finally north toward the Antelope Hills and the Texas
Panhandle.
This was open grass country with a few trees along the water courses, but little
enough timber even there. We picked up fuel where we could find it during the
day, and at night gathered buffalo chips. We were heading into empty country
where there would be almost no water.
We came suddenly upon a group of some twenty horses, all unshod, traveling
northwest by north. I pulled rein.
“Indians,” I said.
The Tinker glanced at me. “Might they not be wild horses?”
“Uh-uh. If they were wild horses, you’d find a pile of dung, but you see it’s
scattered along and that means the Indians kept their horses in motion.
“The tracks are two days old,” I added, “and were made early in the morning.”
The Tinker was amused, but curious, too. “How do you figure that?”
“Look,” I said, “there’s sand stuck to those blades of grass that were packed
down by the horses’ hooves—over there, too. See? There hasn’t been any dew for
the past two mornings, but three days ago there was a heavy dew. That’s when
they passed by here.”
“Then we don’t have to worry,” he suggested.
I chuckled. “Suppose we meet them coming back?”
We rode on, holding to shallow ground when we could find it. We were now coming
into an area that undoubtedly has some of the flattest land on earth—land cut by
several major canyons. However, those canyons were, I believed, much to the
south of us.
I was pretty sure we were following much the same route pa would have taken in
coming west. We’d switched around here and there, but nonetheless I believed our
general route to be the one he would have followed twenty years before.
Their needs for water and fuel would have been the same as ours, and their fears
of Indians even greater since this had been entirely Indian country in their
time. The times when I’d traveled wilderness country with pa had been few,
mostly in the mountains, when I was a very young boy. Yet I knew how his
thinking went, for he had given us much of our early education, either by the
fireside or out in the hills. He was a thinking man, and he had little enough to
leave us aside from the almost uncanny knowledge of wilderness living that he
had picked up over the years.
No man likes to think of all he has learned going up like the smoke of a fire,
to be lost in the vastness of sky and cloud. Pa wanted to share it with us, to
give us what he learned, and I listened well, them days, and I learned a sight
more than I guessed.
So when we saw that knoll with the flat rocks atop it and the creek with trees
growing along it, I said to Orrin, “About there, Orrin. I’d say about there.”
“I’ll bet,” he agreed.
“What is it?” Judas inquired.
“That’s the sort of place pa would camp, an’ if I ain’t mistaken, that there’s
McClellan Creek.”
CHAPTER X
We spurred our horses and loped on up to the edge of a valley maybe a mile wide.
There were large cottonwoods along the banks of a mighty pretty stream that was
about twenty feet wide but no more than six inches deep.
The water was clear and pure, coming down from the Staked Plain that loomed
above and to the west of us. None of us relished that ride, but we had it to do.
“Marcy named this stream after McClellan,” Orrin said. “He believed McClellan
was the first white man to see it. Marcy was exploring the headwaters of the Red
and the Canadian rivers on that trip.”
“We’ll camp,” I said.
We scouted the stream for the best location for a camp and found it at a place
where a huge old cottonwood had toppled to the ground. The upper branches and
some leaves that still clung to them were in the water, but the trunk of the
tree made a good break from the wind, and the other cottonwoods shaded the
place. There was a kind of natural corral where we could bunch the horses.
First we staked them out to graze. The Tinker set watch over them whilst Judas
whipped up the grub. Orrin and me, we nosed around.
The way we figured, we were right on pa’s old trail, and we were wishful of
looking about to see if he left sign. Now all men have their patterns of using
tools, making camp, and the like. Time had swept away most things a man might
leave behind, and this was a country of cold and heat with hard winds and strong
rains coming along all too often.
This was likely a camp where they’d spend time. A long trek was behind them, the
Staked Plain before them, and they knew what that meant.
It was a snug camp. When the horses had grazed enough on the bottom grass, the
Tinker brought them in and we settled them down in the corral.