these camps were too far apart for our heavily loaded 
ponies to make them in a day. I kept an account of the 
time by marking off a day each evening in a small 
almanac that I had in my notebook, and thus knew when 
Christmas and New Year's eame. 
The chiefs oldest son, Te-ta-too-a-nippa, came in one 
evening and reported to his father that he had seen a 
Kiowa to-day who had told him that there was a trader 
down the country somewhere south of us. Next morning 
the chief and I started to hunt him up, and found him 
in camp almost twenty miles below us on the river. He 
wanted to come up and trade, but when he found out that 
there was no escort but me with the Indians, he was 
afraid to come. He said that Stumbling- Bear's band ot 
Kiowas had tried to plunder him a few days before this, 
and they had a big escort. "Yes," I told him, "and thei' 
should have had a bigger one or else have been kept at 
home. They did not plunder anyone when I had them 
out last spring." 
This man was a licensed trader who had a big store on 
the reservation. I knew him very well. 1 will call him 
Jones, because that was not his name ; he had a name that 
is just as common as Jones, though. Jones had a great 
dread of being "put in the papers," as he called it. I 
promised not to put him in and won't — under his proper 
name, at least — even now. He may be living yet, though 
it is hardly probable; and if he is he would still hate to 
be "put in the papers," I know. 
"Well, Jones," I said, "we are not Kiowas. We are 
Comanclies, and if you don't know the difference, I do, 
and you know me. You come part of the way up if you 
don't want tO' come clear to camp, and 1 will stay in your 
camp while we trade and guarantee that not a pound shall 
be taken out of it until it is paid for. Anything that my 
Indians steal from you I'll pay for. I won't have much 
to pay for after I tell them not to plunder you. That 
chief there would shoot down an Indian that tried to 
plunder you after he or I had told him not to do it. We 
are Comanches, not Kiowas." 
This conversation was carried on in English, of course, 
and as the chief did not seem to be paying any attention 
to us, I did not think he had understood us; but he had, 
as I found out next day. 
The chief now got twenty-five pounds of flour and some 
coffee and sugar, promising to pay for them next day ; 
he did not, though-^he forgot it. Then I got some to- 
bacco, for which Jones would not take pay when I offered 
the money, and we left. 
The trader came up to within a mile of us next day, 
and we got ready to go down to him. The men and 
boys and a few of the squaws were sitting on their 
ponies ready to start when the chief gave the order. 
Every pony had a load of skins — furs or buffalo robes. 
Our wolf skins all went; I had given them to the squaws, 
iwho had taken care of them. 
The chief, mounting his pony, now sang out: "Hear 
me now, everybody: That trader is afraid we will plun- 
der him. The Kiowas did it. We are Comanches, not 
Kiowas. Let no man take anything out of that camp 
until he pays for it. The Cabia Blanco has told that 
trader that Comanches are not thieves. See that you don't 
make him a liar. I have spoken." 
The trader had five or six large wagons, each drawn 
by four horses or mules, and air were well loaded. Be- 
fore he opened up he told me to go to his wagons and 
help myself, and I did so, taking fifty pounds of flour and 
coffee, sugar, salt and baking powder, and a lot more to- 
bacco for myself and the boys. What I took would come 
to at least fifty dollars, Indian prices, but they cost me 
nothing. The trader depended on me to keep him from 
being robbed, and I would do it. Then he was anxious 
also to keep me from "putting him in the papers." I 
would not put him in them and did not. These traders 
had been in hot water about that time; their transactions 
with the Indians had been overhauled. This man had 
got off scot free, and did not want another inspector 
after him. That accounted for his dread of the papers, 
s I sent my stuff to camp by a squaw, then took my seat 
on top of a wagon where I could see all that took place, 
and trading began. 
They generally only pay 75 cents for a wolf skin, but 
that would be for skins taken off by the white wolf 
hunters, who do not take pains either in taking them off 
or in curing them. I told him that these had been taken 
off by me and the Indians, and that there were ho flaws in 
them ; they must all go in as first grade, and we wanted 
the dollar for them. He paid the Indians one dollar 
for each ; but had I not been there he would have found a 
flaw in every one of them — they would have all been 
"seconds." No white man living could take better care of 
the skins than the squaws could, and he and I knew it. 
He would examine each skin, then pay for it, and he could 
examine and pass three a minute. His checks were felt 
shotgun wads ; each wad represented a dollar. As soon 
as a man had got his checks he would band them to his 
squaw; then she, going to the wagons, got what she 
wanted. His drivers were his salesmen. Every few 
minutes I would have to act as interpreter for the 
squaws. 
After I had ground out Comanche for a while, the 
trader said: "You seem to have it all. What is this 
'menana' and 'mahenda' that you give these squaws so 
much ?" 
"My sister and my mother," I told him. 
"How long have you been with them?" 
"All winter." 
"Well, you can stand them better than I could. Half 
that time would be enough for me." 
"You don't know these Indians, Jones. The white men 
don't live that could treat me better than these In- 
dians do." 
His prices were Indian prices. He sold eight pounds of 
flour for a dollar, or a pound of coffee or a pound and 
a half of sugar, or a plug of tobacco — about a quarter of 
a pound, natural leaf. A squaw's dress pattern of five- 
cent calico (five yards is a pattern) cost her one dollar; 
and his prices for paints, beads, bridles, needles, thread, 
and the hundreds of things that an Indian will buy were 
on the same scale; but these were exactly the prices he 
would have charged the Indians at his store, and he had 
hauled these goods himdreds of miles to get them to us; 
so I had no fault to find. This trader was one of the 
fairest that did business here. I knew that long since. 
One of his big wagons was loaded with nothing but 
FOREST AND StftfeAM. 
flour in one hundred pound square sacks such as are put 
up for the army and the Indians. Every one of these 
sacks was marked in letters six inches high, "U. S. I. D." 
--United States Indian Department. This was flour that 
had been sent out to feed the Indians, and which some 
agent had stolen from them and sold. I called his atten- 
tion to it. 
"Yes," he said, "but it has been condemned and sold." 
"Tell that condemned story to some tenderfoot. I 
have been out here nearly long enough to know better 
than swallow it. You and I know about how bad Indian 
flour would have to be before it was fit to condemn. 
But that is all right. I am not putting you in the papers, 
Jones. I am Comanche enough now to 'look the other 
way' when my friends do wrong. But I guess I have 
had the man who sold you that flour in the papers 
already." 
There was nothing at all wrong with this flour. We 
got no better in the army, and we were supposed to get 
the best, and generally did. I had a squaAV wash out one 
of the muslin sacks and put it carefully away for the 
agent's benefit ; but I never used it. Had any one but 
Jones sold it, though, I would have tried to get that agent 
another inspection. I think I had got him one already. 
The trader in his stores had some pound packages of 
tea. The men don't care for it, but the squaws want it. 
This tea had probably cost him forty cents a pound; he 
wanted two dollars for it. I asked for a pound and 
offered him the money. "No," he told me, "help yourself 
to whatever you see. You are welcome." Then, looking 
to see that no Indian men were near enough to hear him, 
he added : "I have some whiskey in the cook wagon for 
my own use. Go and help yourself." 
"No, I don't need any now; and don't let an Indian 
have a drop. You know what a drunken Indian is as 
well as I do." 
I need not fear their getting it; he was not ready to be 
plundered or shot yet, he told me. 
He had a large lot of cartridges of every caliber that 
was in use out here, and the Indians wanted them, but he 
dare not sell them ; he carried them to sell to the whites 
and Mexicans. It was a penal offense to sell an Indian 
arms or ammunition or to even bring whiskey into the 
Indian countr}^ Had he been caught with this whiskey, 
his whole outfit would have been confiscated. 
"Well, I can't give you permission to sell them car- 
tridges, Jones, but I want them to have them. They won't 
shoot me with any of them. You sell them all they want. 
Don't be afraid of me — I won't see it." 
"1 can't — you know how strict they are with us now." 
"Well, we are nearly out of ammunition, and the 
Cheyennes and Arapahoes are burning the grass ahead of 
us. When I overtake them I mean to stop it. If they 
don't I'll make them, and I want ammunition." 
"Then take what you want yourself, and buy what you 
want for them. I'll take their checks from you; the law 
does not prevent me from selling you what you want, 
and I am not supposed to follow you and see what you do 
with it." 
I gathered up a lot of his checks, then, when his drivers 
were where they could hear me, I said : "Jones, I have a 
Winchester in camp and want a lot of cartridges for it. 
Sell me some." 
"Yes, of course." Then to one of his men: "Go 
and give him what Colt's or .4SS he wants. Then sell him 
the Winchesters, but be careful and sell none to these 
Indians." 
I took all the Winchester ammunition he had, and then 
gave it out myself. 
One of his wagons was partly loaded with bacon which 
he meant to throw away, he told me; the Indians did not 
want it. 
"Ours will eat it," I said. "Let the squaws have it. Go 
to that wagon, my sister," I called out, "and take that 
bacon, but take nothing else. The trader gives you that 
bacon— it is his present." In five minutes there was no 
bacon in the wagon, the chief's squaw standing there to 
see that each one got her share, and that nothing else was 
lifted along with the bacon. 
Trading was about over now, it was getting late, and 
the chief told the Indians to go home. "Wait a moment," 
I told him; then called out, "If any of my brothers have 
any of this money yet, let them buy something now. This 
trader will not be here to-morrow, and his money is not 
good with any other trader." 
A lot more of his checks came out, and the Indians did 
not carry home any gun wads that had cost them a dollar 
each. All had now left but the chief and I. "The chief 
has not paid me for that flour he got yesterday. I reckon 
he forgot it," Jones told me. 
"No, he never forgets anything, but he thinks that you 
have forgotten it. I'll tell him about it and he will pay 
you." 
"No, never mind it. I want to keep on the right side 
of these chiefs." 
"Yes; you keep on the right side of these Comanche 
chiefs and no Comanche will ever plunder you. If he did 
he might as well go out and shoot himself." 
I was the last to leave, and when bidding Jones good-by 
1 said : "Well, we did not plunder you, did we ?" 
"No, your crowd is all right. Now I need not look for 
myself in the papers, need I?" 
"No, Jones, I am not putting you in the papers. You 
are all right. I wish the rest were as fair as you always 
are, then I need not put anyone in the papers." 
I had been in the habit of sending letters to four dif- 
ferent eastern papers whenever anything of interest 
occurred, as an Indian outbreak or the like, and once in 
a while I would give one or another of these Indian 
agents a left-handed compliment. I signed my letters 
Duquesne, after a locality in Pittsburg, Pa., where I had 
come from, but everyone out here knew who Duquesne 
was. These papers called me "our special correspondent 
in the field." I n«ver sent any account of this trip to 
these papers. It would not probably interest their 
readers ; but some years after this I sent a mere skeleton 
sketch of it — only a couple of columns — to the Forest 
AND Stream, which published it. 
The Kiowas that Jones had said had tried to plunder 
him were about the meanest gang that we had, and their 
chief. Stumbling Bear, was, if possible, still meaner than 
his band. I had been sent from St. Louis up to Sill at 
my own request the last spring to join the troop I was 
111 
now m as a recruit ; but I had been in this regiment ten 
years already, and the general here knew me. My troop 
was out now, and while waiting to join them here, these 
Kiowas were sent out on a hunt, and I got permission to 
go along with their escort. There were a serReant and 
twenty men in this escort. Any other band would have 
got along with five or six men. An escort as large as 
this should have had at least one corporal. We had none, 
the general telling the sergeant to use me as. his corporal. 
The first day out the sergeant was thrown by his horse 
getting his foot into a gopher hole,' and both he and his 
horse were hurt badly. He turned his escort over to me 
until another sergeant should be sent to relieve me, and 
went back to Sill. No one came to supersede me, and I 
took Stumbling Bear and his band out west, got them 
plenty of buffalo, and did not let. them plunder anyone, 
but had to level my carbines at them one day to convince 
them that I meant what I said. They had been riding 
past buffalo all day and did not want them; "they were 
no good," he said. When late in the afternoon they be- 
gan to round up a bunch of cattle to drive to camp and 
kill, I rode up to the chief and told him to drop those 
cows and go on. He "no savied me." Had I asked him 
to take a drink of whiskey, he would have savied that 
quick enough, though. 
_ My escort was back straggling along the trail, and rid- 
ing back to them I told them to form fours ; then came up 
to where the Indians were at a trot, then called out, "On 
right front, into line, gallop, marsh !" Then "Halt !" The 
Indians now got to be interested— something was about to 
be doing. Next I called out, "Unsling carbines— load at 
will." 
The chief rode up to me now and asked, "You shoot?" 
He had found his English again. I pretended not to hear 
him, and said: "Ready, aim!" And the chief and his 
men, dropping the cattle, almost rode over each other to 
get away from there. I was going to shoot. 
After this I never had to give this chief an order the 
second time. He always "savied" me the first time. 
Cabia Blanco. 
The Louisiana Purchase Exposition 
Some Features of Special Interest to Sportsmen. 
The St. Louis Exposition is gone— the Sportsmen's 
Show IS coming. Some notes on the former may in- 
crease the helpfulness of the latter. The first question 
regarding any proposed, hunting or fishing trip is, 
How to get there?" In mfier words, transportation. 
This includes not only raiite, but means of travel 
These were abundant, interesting and instructive at St. 
Louis. One looked with wonder at the Siamese collec- 
tion of wooden carts and other vehicles, mainly small 
and adapted only to light loads. Involuntarily one 
pitied a people so old among nations, yet using such 
prirnitive conveyance. But a few steps caused a re- 
vulsion of feeling as one saw another wooden cart 
having a medium-sized rack of small stakes (like an 
old-fashioned hayrack for cart or wagon) surmounting 
it, and a single steer (mounted) between the thills, the 
whole being labeled, "the only means of transportation, 
N. W. of St. Paul, prior to 1871." Pity for Siamese 
gives place to admiration for our hardy pioneers, who, 
at such cost, redeemed our great northwest and made 
possible and appropriate such an exposition at St. 
Louis. Another crude form of transportation was a 
Brazilian dugout, estimated to be 60ft. long, 4ft. wide, 
and 2^ft. deep. It was provided with both sails and 
oars, but was a clumsy looking affair. From all these 
it was far to the modern Pullman car, yacht, or launch. 
Much of interest introduced, e. g., there was a great 
display of early forms of the locomotive. The "De- 
Witt Clinton," with its train of stage coaches, was 
there, and, with the others, furnished an almost com- 
plete histoi-y of locomotive development. From the 
earliest to the most recent engines was as far a cry as 
from the primitive cart to the first railway train. Look, 
for instance, at the new "695" of the Lake Shore Rail- 
road, an engine with three driving wheels, eighty inches 
high, on each side, and everything else in proportion. 
Indeed, the machine might well stand as a railway 
model of symmetry. No trouble about "getting there" 
where "695" draws the train. She is built for speed. 
Quite in conti-ast is the B. & O. "St. Louis," the 
biggest engine in the world — a compound engine with 
two sets of cylinders and two sets of drivers, three 
in a set, on each side, making twelve drivers in all— a 
monster boiler in size and length, the whole machine, 
equipped for business, weighing 240 tons, a veritable 
Jumbo, and, by a reversal of railway ancestry, "the 
grandfather of them all." Surely, this freighter is able 
to draw the heaviest loads of game that even Maine 
can produce. Sometimes it is a question how to get 
game to the railroad, and strong lumber wagons are 
needed. For such cases attention is directed to a lum- 
ber wagon shown by the Studebaker Co., which ex- 
pended over 400 days' work and $2,150 in building it. 
The box was rosewood, piano-finish, and the rest was 
in keeping. 
Mention should be made of a cross section of the 
Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel under the Hudson, show- 
ing the iron tube that rests on steel piles driven to 
bedrock, and large enough in diameter for the cars 
to pass through. A beautiful model was also shown of 
the new passenger station to be erected in Manhattan 
by the Pennsylvania Railroad. Surely the modern 
sportsman can now travel with speed and comfort, 
while aerial navigation, as illustrated at the fair, sug- 
gests future possibilities of reaching the remote wilder- 
ness that will surpass present methods as much as 
the high-power rifles of to-day are ahead of the old 
flintlock muskets, and this leads to the various ex- 
hibits of arms. 
The Winchester Company made a fine showing of 
rifles. Several exhibits of shotguns, both of home and 
foreign make, were seen. In one French collection was 
a rifle of peculiar construction. It was a double rifle 
with but one barrel. Tn this one barrel were two bores 
—one about .40, the other about .22 caliber — the smaller 
one underneath the larger. _ No one was at hand to 
describe the practical working of the piece, but cer- 
