together the necessary horses and mules, as we had more than two 

 hundred miles to travel, before we could begin work in the Bad Lands 

 of South Dakota and at that camp the one anecdote of Proctor that is 

 worth recording was enacted. 



I should begin by saying that he had a great contempt for Kansas, 

 which he always called "bleedin' Kansas," a term that dated from the 

 bloody fighting of the pro-slavery and anti-slavery setders before the 

 Civil War. Our camp was very near the old "Overland Trail" and, one 

 evening I saw, topping a rise far to the eastward and brightly lighted 

 by the level sun, what I took to be a buggy and, in astonishment, ex- 

 claimed: "What, on earth, is a buggy doing out here?" Proctor imme- 

 diately rejoined: "Buggy! hell! that's some dam' sod-pelter from bleed- 

 in' Kansas. Wait till he gits up here in the mornin' and you'll see he's 

 got six dogs." "Why! Proctor, what's the connection between poverty 

 and dogs in Kansas?" "Down in Kansas, a poor man's got one dog, a 

 dam' poor man's got two, and a poor, God dam', lousy son of a — has 

 got six." When the sod-pelter passed our camp the next morning, the 

 number of his dogs, by actual count, was five. 



A series of letters, describing in minute detail, the events of the 1882 

 trip, is before me, but though these are of intense interest to me, they 

 could hardly fail to be tedious to any one else. I shall therefore, con- 

 struct from them, a much abbreviated narrative. 



The first stage of our long march was to Fort Laramie, ninety miles, 

 which took us five days to cover, because of the long stretches of deep 

 sand through which we had to pass. Fort Laramie itself was of great 

 historic interest; originally a fur trader's station, it had been bought by 

 the Government and converted into a military post, but the old, forti- 

 fied enclosure, built of sods, or adobe, was in use as a corral. Of all 

 the garrisoned military posts that I have ever seen. Fort Laramie was 

 the most neglected and ill-kept and I saw there a striking illustration 

 of the incredibly fooHsh way in which the army administration at Wash- 

 ington mismanaged its affairs. 



The equipment which we had drawn from the State Arsenal at Tren- 

 ton was "Civil War stuff," much of it very rickety. They had issued 

 to us felt saddle-pads, which, by the time we reached Fort Laramie, 

 were dropping to pieces. I appUed to the Quartermaster to sell me 

 eight saddle-blankets and he invited me to come with him to the store- 

 house and select a lot for myself. We opened a new case and I took out 

 a blanket; noticing a large wet spot, I poked it with my finger and 

 ran my hand through the blanket, as though it had been wet paper. One 



