WILD HORSES. 283 



accurately, and here I managed to tie her up and give her a 

 lesson. One of my horses met with a sad fate at this camp. 

 We found one morning that he had pulled up his picket-pin 

 and had gone off, and the place being a mass of horse-tracks 

 we could not trail him up. There was a great deal of heavy 

 timber and thick undergrowth round camp, and we hunted this 

 carefully, but could find no trace of him ; and it was not until 

 some months later that we heard from a cattle-man that one of 

 his cowboys, hunting for strayed cattle, had found him tied up 

 in some bushes below our camp and nearly dead from starva- 

 tion. He had given him food and water ; but it was too late, 

 and he died. 



From Buffalo Creek we moved about twenty miles to Beaver 

 Creek, arriving there late at night, and for some time could 

 not find any grass or water, as the country had been burnt, 



and the only water in the Creek was in muddy pools. F 



and I were riding ahead and had just entered a small grove 

 of trees, when out dashed a herd of horses. We at once 

 thought we had come across an Indian camp and had stam- 

 peded their horses ; so we galloped out into the open, getting 

 our rifles ready as we went ; but hearing nothing, and seeing 

 that the horses were led by a large roan stallion, we knew that 

 they must be a wild band. These were the only wild horses 

 I had ever seen during eleven years' wanderings in the west. 

 There were a few in Western Texas in 1868, but they were 

 not worth catching, and were killed for their skins. I had a 

 talk with old Bridger some years before on the subject of 

 wild horses, he having lived in the west nearly sixty years; 

 and he told me that it generally ruined a good horse to catch 

 a wild one, and that when broken most of them lost their 



