f’dREst AND StkEAM. 
Sept. i6, 1905.] 
or until the wagon from a camp twenty triiles beyond 
us came by on the way to the station, ntearly forty milfes 
away, when wc sfent him in tO a hospital, where life sdon 
reeovfered. , . 
A tenderfoot without water dn the desert in .thfe, suni- 
mfer will go niad in, eight ,hour§, a result partly due fd 
his imaginatioii and thfe horrors of ,his position. Itl 
sufeh feonditioh nihfe oiit of ten of them will strip stark naked 
and go running wildly across the desert in any direction 
and at times will flee front their rescuers and show fight 
when overtaken. Sometimes it is necessary to “lass” 
and tie them down before they will submit to treatment. 
There are plants with a pulpy leaf containing all acrid 
juice that might keep them alive for a few hours, but 
it is useless to describe them; one must see them and 
taste them to know them. Of course, there is the 
“bull” or “niggerhead” cactus; I have seen them nearly 
as large as a twenty-gallon barrel. Chop into one of 
those and one will get juice enough to sustain life; 
but, they do not grow everywhere nor in great plenty, 
and one really needs an ax or a hatchet to cut into 
them, though one may gouge into them with a stout- 
bladed hunting knife. 
The absence of all humidity from the atmosphere 
makes the heat endurable; giving the degrees of humid- 
ity in the Middle West and Atlantic States and neither 
man nor animal could endure the heat of the desert. 
But the air is absolutely dry and the evaporation is 
very rapid. One perspires very freely; per.spiration 
literally runs from every pore; and drink — it is nothing 
for one man to drink two or more gallons of water in 
a day. If one stops sweating he had better take means 
to start it again at once. It is this evaporation that 
keeps our drinking water cool, even on the hottest days. 
We use zinc canteens, tin. is worse than useless; it is 
liable to rust and spring a leak at a time when your 
life depends on its contests. We cover the zinc canteens 
with several thicknesses of old wool blankets and over 
that a thickness or two of gunnysacking. This we keep 
wmt all the time and hang in the shade of our packs, if 
traveling. At a permanent camp wm used Indian ollas, 
a squat, wide-mouthed, porous earthen jar that may 
hold from one-half to ten gallons. These jars we cover 
in the same manner as the canteens and hang in the 
shade. .The evaporation keeps the water cool and re- 
freshing without the dangerous chill of ice-water. 
This absence of humidity makes the atmosphere re- 
markably clear, and the range of vision is phenomenal. 
A range of mountains or a landmark that appears to 
be no more than an hour away may be distant a hard 
day’s travel. With the naked eye I have seen a man 
walking on the desert ten miles away. Of course I was 
on an elevation, the side of a mountain, and I could 
have distinguished him, if moving, much further than 
ten miles. The pureness and dryness of the air is not 
surpassed anywhere, and north or south there is 
nothing between the poles to pollute it. 
E. E. Bowles. 
[to be concluded.] 
Hunting Bears and Indians. 
On April 3, 1870, our troop was sent out from Fort 
Griffin^ — it is now the town of Griffin — Texas, to scout 
southeast of it and hunt for any stray Indians that might 
have come down from the Territory on a horse-stealing 
expedition. We had not long to hunt for them, we 
found them; or rather they found us, a few hours after 
we had started to look for them. The Indians would 
walk down here, bringing bridles; then when they had 
got horses they would ride back again. That is, they 
sometimes did; but not if we found them before they 
had found the horses. 
We camped this afternoon on Hubbard’s Creek, only 
a few miles from the fort, and soon after camp was 
made, the captain and surgeon went off up the creek 
to fish, taking no arms with them. It was the last 
time that either of them ever went fishing without arms. 
The camp had been made on the second bottom, a 
wide flat place above the creek, which had on it a num- 
ber of mesquite bushes, and our horses were tied out 
on grass among the bushes. About an hour before sun- 
set, while I was out at my horse changing him on 
fresh grass, I happened to look off to my right, where 
a low bank led up to the prairie beyond, and noticed 
several Indians on foot coming down the bank as if 
they were in no hurry to get down. 
It never for a moment occurred to me that they were 
hostile Indians. We had several of our Tonkawa 
scouts with us, and I took these Indians to be some 
.of them; the deliberate way that they were, coming 
made me think so, but not for long. One of them 
fired at me, the ball just going above my head, and now 
I knew who they were. I had about thirty yards to 
go to get to my saddle, and it took me just about 
thirty seconds to get there. Picking up my carbine, I 
slung the little leather pouch that held my cartridges 
over my shoulder and ran out among the horses 
again. A young Tonkawa boy, named Anderson, a pet 
of mine, overtook me. He had his carbine but no 
cartridges and I gave him some of mine. 
No Indians were in sight here now. If they were 
down in the bottom, the bushes hid them, and we 
could not fire here anyhow, for"^our horses were in 
the road. Our men were stringing out now, each man 
by himself; but none of them came where we were. 
Just now two Indians ran out from among the horses 
and started to climb up the bank in front of us. Ander- 
son and I both fired and one of them dropped; the 
other kept on. We fired again and the second one 
fell,_got up, and was out of sight before we could shoot 
again. Going up to where the first one lay we found 
that both of us had hit him and he was as dead now 
as he ever would be; and Anderson proceeded to scalp 
him. I saw that this one was a Kiowa; had he been 
a Comanche I would have stopped Anderson; I was 
supposed to do it anyhow, but did not want to inter- 
fere with any of these Indians’ customs, not in the 
present case. 
This was not the red brother who had been shooting 
at me, this one had only a bow and arrows on him. 
Anderson seized hold of his scalp lock, cut a circle around 
it on his scalp, then giving it a jerk, brought it off and 
swinging it aroupd Ins head, brought it down on the 
dead Indian’s face and was about to rriutilate him after 
a custoni that these TortkawaS had when I stopped that. 
The scalping only delayed us a minute, and then we kept 
on out in the direction the other Indian had taken. I 
knew he had beeii hit and could ndt go very far. He 
would probably bte found lying out in the bushes some- 
where waiting for a chance to shoOt one of us before he 
took his departure for the happy hunting grounds. Al- 
thoug;h both of us were looking for him, we did not 
see him until we had passed him; then he fired a shot 
at us out of some bushes he was lying in. Anderson 
and I dropping flat on the ground now, opened fire on 
the bushes, but after we had wasted half a dozen shots, 
getting no reply, we went to them and found the man 
dead. He had only been hit once, when climbing the 
hill; all the shots we had sent in here had been misses, 
the ball that killed him had gone clear through his 
body. I wondered how he had lived to get this far. 
This was another Kiowa. His tribe seemed to be on 
the warpath to-day. This was no doubt the one who 
had tried to put me off it. He had a Colt’s pistol so 
tightly clasped in his right hand that I had to twist it 
around to get it. This pistol, a powder and ball Colt’s 
just like mine, was empty; he had fired his last shot, 
and had no more to load with. The cowboy he had 
stolen this pistol from had cut his initials, “J. A.,” in 
the stock; had he added the B., they would have been 
my initials. I added it and carried the pistol, for I 
wanted two. Andersen dragged the Indian out of the 
bushes now, then asked if I wanted to scalp this one. 
“No,” I told him, “if I did and the Major heard of it 
I would walk and lead my horse for the next week. You 
can scalp him.” 
Just now the trumpet in camp half a mile away sounded 
the recall. The captain had got into camp but had to 
hunt a trumpeter next; the boy was out after Indians like 
the rest of us ; he shot two. Or said he did. Maybe he did, 
for others were shot as we afterward found out. A 
month after this some cowboys told me that they had 
found the bodies of three more dead Indians several miles 
from the scene of the engagement. When the Indians 
were coming down here they passed within thirty yards 
of the captain and doctor but never saw them, the Indians 
being up on the bank while the officers were below the 
bank fishing. Had they been seen there would have been 
vacancies for a captain and assistant surgfeon in the army 
in the next few minutes. 
We rode all over this country as long as we had any 
light to see by, but I saw no more Indians, nor did we 
see any of these afterward, the few that escaped alive 
walked home. I did not know then what this battle 
would be called, or whether it would be called anything 
or not, but nearly four years after this, when I had my 
next discharge handed me, I turned to the back of it to 
see if I had been credited with the correct number of 
Indian engagements and found that I had been in the 
fight of Hubbard’s Creek, Tex., April 3, 1870. TheseTn- 
dians had taken us to be a party of cowboys when they 
first saw our camp. H_ad they known who we were, they 
would not have come within a mile of us. Some of us 
did look as much like cowboys as anything else. 
We kept on hunting Indians, and after a day or two, 
when we were sure that those we had hunted last had 
gone home, we headed west. The captain meant to go as 
far as the Mountain Pass country where the Cohatties 
had had me corralled a few years before this at the time 
they chased me, and a day or two after we had turned 
west, while riding across the prairie one afternoon, a 
small black bear was seen making quick time across the 
prairie going south. He had been on the trail we were 
now on, and had just seen us. 
I got permission to follow him. Anderson, who had 
not asked any permission, was already after him. The 
prairie was as level as a barn floor, just the place to run a 
bear or anything else on. The bear had .600 yards the 
start of us, and he kept it for the next mile, too. Any 
man who has seen the black bears in a menagerie and 
thinks that the clumsy animal cannot run need only to 
try to catch one of them when the bear is in a hurry to 
go home, to find out his mistake. ,p 
I rode a horse that would never be mista%n for a cart 
horse, I had run buffalo with him, and Anderson had a 
good pony. Tpassed Anderson at the end of a mile and 
he pulled up ind stopped ; but I kept on and at the end 
of another mile ran the bear down and shot him. 
Anderson came vupi while I was examining the bear and 
said: v " 
“Mebbe so some Comanches go that way to-day,” point- 
ing west. “I see heap trail back there.” That was what 
he had stopped for. 
“How many are there?” I asked. 
“Mebbe so ten ponies and a heap cows.” 
Jumping on my horse I said: “Come and tell the 
major about it right away.” 
I would lose my bear ; I might as well have let him go ; 
I never saw him again. We took a course across the 
prairie that would bring us out on the trail the troop was 
on, and when crossing the Comanche trail I saw it plain 
now. Had I not been too busy trying to overtake the 
bear I might have seen it when Anderson did. We came 
up with the troop just as they had turned off to go into 
camp, and, reported the Indians. 
Getting over on their trail we followed it mounted 
until dark, then on foot, leading our horses all night, 
going now at the rate of a mile an hour while the scouts 
felt for the trail.. 
Feeling for it just describes it. The scouts would have 
to get down on their knees every once in a while to see 
whether they were on the trail or not. Just at daylight 
we came across one of the Indians seated alongside the 
trail holding his pony and fast asleep. He had been left 
here on picket and had gone asleep on post. 
A Tonkawa shot him, using his gun to do it with. Had 
he used his bow or a knife we might have got all his 
party, as it was he was the only one we did get. His 
friends who had halted below here, taking the alarm 
dropped their cows and left. We mounted and charged 
across a wet bottom after them; but their ponies had all 
the advantage here; they could cross this swamp any- 
where, while our heavy horses would have to hunt solid 
B27 
\ n , 
ground, and when we found it the Indians were out of 
sight. We might kill our horses now and not overtake 
them. Whether any of the balls we sent after them 
reached them we never knew. I do know, though, that 
on their account I was out a bear skin. Some toyote got 
it; he did not go after it, though, before he was ceftaifi 
that the bear was dead. Cabia BlAnccI; 
Cabia Blancd* 
hditor Forest and Stream: 
It was with sincere regret that I read that Cabia Blanco 
is dead. His tales of adventure in the old West were 
full of touches and grips which brought one next to the 
wide open lands. When he, a real outdoor man, spoke, it 
was to tell seme fact unfretted by conventional theory or 
notion. His calm narrative of the pedantic Easterner who 
wanted the scientific names for everything, and how 
gladly he helped the tenderfoot to an ample supply of 
“hog Latin” cognomens was one of the funniest things I 
ever read. Coahoma’s phrase, “the air of verity pervad- 
ing” Cabia Blanco’s writings strikes the keynote of the 
tales. In every one of these stories one finds groupings 
of words which any writer might envy. In “My First 
Black Bear” he says of his Indian boy friend : 
“He taught me to handle and ride their ponies, and 
when we got to the buffalo country, taught me to kill 
buffalo.” 
There is nothing better than that anywhere. Every 
paragraph he wrote has a sentence like this one, running 
over with hints of things untold, but telling all that should 
be told at the time. 
No one with the love of nature in his heart could do 
otherwise than rejoice in the kindly heart which shows 
through Cabia Blanco’s Indians. “The chief gave our 
horses a critical examination. Had he not been a Crow 
I should have been right at his heels lest one of these 
horses might get stuck to his fingers; but I did not go 
near him.” “When I took charge of these two team 
horses I began to make pets of them right away. They 
had no names. I named one John and the other Charley. 
They soon knew their names and would answer to them.'” 
In his pocket was always something good for his “pet,” 
and his pen wrote only kindly words. The good humored 
tolerance for his officers is shown in countless naive say- 
ings. 
Such a surprising variety of experiences were de- 
scribed or hinted at in bis stories. In a sentence or two, 
an aside in “another story,” he reveals the fact that Cabia 
Blanco is no mere nom de plume, but one bestowed by 
one of the tribes of Indians whom he had met some- 
where in the Louisiana Purchase. 
What a pleasure it is to turn back and read the stories 
Cabia Blanco wrote for us. They are the real thing. He 
was no mere onlooker. He made those long rides him- 
self, not thinking that they were for publication. He 
loved them for themselves, and remembered his Indians, 
his tenderfeet, his buffaloes, his horses and his rifles be- 
cause they were all true friends, each one of whom had 
given him a delight— something it was not in Cabia 
Blanco’s heart to forget. Raymond S. Spears. 
Little Falls, N. Y. , 
A Narrow Escape. 
Saratoga, Wyo. — Editor Forest and Stream: I have 
been reading a story in Forest and Stream written by 
Emerson Carney, an old friend and fellow angler of 
mine. It reminds me of old times, and a feeling to write 
has got hold of me. Most of my life has been spent upon 
the frontier, first in the northern part of Michigan, then 
in Texas and the Indian Territory. In 1879 I landed in 
Colorado and did nothing but hunt and act as guide for 
English outfits for twelve years. I say that I did nothing 
else; well I did try to ranch but made a sorry job of it. 
There was too much game close to the ranch, and I 
always took it upon myself to get the meat, and when 
the cook had plenty of meat I put in my time walking 
in the mountains and looking at the deer and elk as they 
fed along the creeks or in the small upper parks. 
I, always kept a good man or two at work on the ranch 
—at least they worked some of the time; and if they 
looked up to notice the antelope or deer in the meadow I 
never blamed them. All I Wonder at is how they did so 
much as they did. My partner and I killed in fifty-one 
days in January and February, 1881, 356 antelope, 106 elk, 
twelve mountain sheep, ten deer and one mountain lion. 
We took the meat from the bone and salted it in vats 
made of bull elk hide. After it had become well salted 
we made a large smoke house and smoked the meat about 
four days, then let it dry. 
We killed this meat 225 miles from Denver, where we 
hauled it, together with the hides. We got fifteen cents 
per pound for the meat, sixteen cents per pound for the 
antelope hides, nineteen cents for the elk hides, and 
twenty-two cents for the deer and mountain sheep. I can 
honestly say that I have never killed a split-hoofed ani- 
mal for its hide, and never had any use for people who 
did. 
After reading some bear stories in your paper I hate to 
say anything about bear, and will not, excepting to say that 
since coming to Colorado I have killed twenty-three, some 
very large; but I never saw one that put up any kind of 
a fight at all. The only animal I have ever seen in the 
Rockies that was strictly on the bad was the wolverine; 
and I tell you they are always ready to “scrap.” 
I once had a very narrow escape from being killed. Let 
me tell you how it happened. There were three Eastern 
ministers who came to see me. I was told of this by my 
partner while putting up my saddle horse one evening, and 
to make matters worse he informed me that there was 
no meat on the ranch. Of course I had to get meat. He 
slipped my gun and cartridges out to me and I hiked to 
a place not very far up the creek, where I was almost 
sure to find elk. When I peeped over a rocky ridge I saw 
an old and very large bull just on the point of turning 
around. A frightened bull elk can turn a little quicker 
than anything, but j List as he made a start to turn I pulled 
the trigger and the old .43 ball took him in the center of 
the forehead. He finished turning and did it so quickly 
that the ball came out behind and hit me between the 
eyes, and came very nearly doing me up, but the preachers 
had meat to eat. Luke Wheeler. 
