422 BUFFALO LAND. 



quite salty, and as we drank liberally of the coffee, 

 and were unable afterward to find a spring, our suf- 

 ferings before morning amounted to positive torture. 

 Each one of the party found that his lungs were 

 benefited by our sojourn on the plains. I believe 

 that a consumptive could find decidedly more relief 

 in Buffalo Land than among the mountains further 

 west. 



During the evening, we added considerably to our 

 already very full notes concerning the wild tribes of 

 the western plains. So many are the "true tales of 

 the border " which one can hear in a few months of 

 such journeyings as ours, that the recital of even a 

 tithe of the number would become tiresome. The red- 

 bearded owner of " Shed-tail " added to our store, by 

 relating an adventure which he claimed had oc- 

 curred to himself and Buffalo Bill, when they were 

 teamsters together in an overland train. It was to 

 the effect that while riding ahead of the wagons, to 

 find a crossing over the Sandy, they discovered 

 the skeleton of a man lying at the foot of a cotton- 

 wood tree. As they dismounted for the purpose of 

 finding some means, if possible, of identifying the 

 remains, their attention was caught by letters cut in 

 the bark. These they deciphered sufficiently to see 

 that it had been an attempt by some weak hand to 

 carve a name. A broken knife, lying near the bones, 

 told plainly enough who the worker at the epitaph 

 had been, and other signs revealed to the frontiers- 

 men the whole death history. The man had been 

 assailed by savages, scalped, and left as dead. The 

 work of the knife showed that he must have re- 



