HENEIETTA IN 1874. 269 



their three companions had been murdered with an axe by the 

 Mexican, who left a written statement of his reasons for doing 

 it. We had been wise in getting rid of our cook when we did, 

 for the Mexicans are a revengeful and treacherous race, and if 

 any of us had struck him we might have met with the same fate. 



From Gainsville we set out for Henrietta, a very small 

 settlement not far from where Fort Buffalo springs used to be, 

 on the Little Wichita River. On the way my rifle fell out of 

 the waggon and remained nearly a day on the road; how- 

 ever, fortunately no one came along the road, and we found 

 it when we went back to look for it. Henrietta was then a 

 place of a dozen small cabins, placed in two lines facing one 

 another, on the bare prairie, and about two hundred yards from 

 the river. The principal man, who was always spoken of as 

 Judge Johnson (I am sure I do not know why, for he was the 

 postmaster and had never been a lawyer), had a long talk to 

 us about our trip, and tried to persuade us to give it up by 

 telling us that the Indians, chiefly Sheyennes and Arrapahoes, 

 were very bad just then, and that they fully expected that the 

 settlement would be attacked before long. A party who had 

 been out " skin hunting " had lately come in with several of 

 the men wounded and their waggon riddled with bullets. We 

 had heard this kind of thing so often before that we did not 

 take much notice of it, generally finding any Indian news to 

 be very much exaggerated, if not entirely untrue. 



Our first day out from Henrietta we camped on the bank of 

 a small stream away from any bushes, partly as being a better 

 position, in case Indians should take it into their heads to 

 attack us, and partly as low ground means ague in Texas, and we 

 had both of us had enough of that. During the night a norther 



