232 LEAVE FOET AKBUCKLE. 



then go down to Memphis, on the Mississippi, where our party 

 would break up. We had still four mules, though we had lost 

 two of our best, and four horses fortunately neither my mare 

 nor the Sheridan horse had been hurt so that we still had 

 enough for our present journey. We left the fort about the 

 middle of July, and travelled slowly through a very pretty 

 country, killing a deer now and then for food, as there were 

 then no cattle in those parts. Our dogs had dwindled to two, 

 our camp dog and a pointer, and the latter caused us a good 

 laugh soon after leaving the Post. We jumped a wolf from 

 some bushes, on which the pointer gave chase, the wolf doing 

 his best till he was on the other side of a small valley and 

 out of shot, when he turned round and waited for his 

 pursuer, who on coming up and finding the wolf waiting for 

 him, seeing, too, that he had some very formidable teeth and 

 was altogether a different animal from what he appeared to 

 be when running away, he now stopped, and then the two sat 

 down face to face, putting out their noses to smell one 

 another, one of them making a step forward when the other 

 would take one back ; and this continued for some minutes, 

 when they got up and separated, the dog returning to us 

 with a very sheepish air. All this time we had been trying 

 to set Booze on the wolf's track, but without success, and 

 we found soon afterwards that the great heat during our 

 journey had made a coward, at all events temporarily, of one 

 of the pluckiest dogs I ever met with. 



In a few days we passed the first ranche, and from this 

 point we came across a good many, getting milk and butter 

 now and then great treats when you have been without them 

 for months. We reached the Red River without any incident 



