808 
“Are yon going to re-enlist rvith me?” he wanted to 
know. 
“No, sir; I ani going to St. Louis to enlist.” 
He was short a sergeant ; he had been short of one fo)' 
some time now and had not promoted a corporal. 
“I will appoint you sergeant the day you re-enlist,” he 
told me. “I can keep you out of the quartermaster’s 
then, I think.” 
“I am afraid not, sir; he wants me for a wagon master, 
he told me; that sergeant’s appointment would just suit 
him.” 
“Well, then, I am afraid I can never let you do any 
more hunting here, you have done the last of it.” 
I went straight to the colonel now and told my story. , 
It was no doubt an old story with him now ; he had heard 
all about it from his wife. 
“How long a pass did I want?” 
“About fifteen days, sir. I want to go up the Canadian 
again.” I had been tip it less than a year ago. Then this 
captain of mine was anxious for me to hunt; I was hunt- 
ing up stray Indians then to send them in home for him. 
The colonel started to write my pass, then handing it 
to me said: “Now, if you can’t get back in fifteen days, 
think up an excuse for not doing it, and I won’t mark 
you a deserter when you do get back.” 
Going back to the captain I handed him my pass and 
said : “I would like to start early in the morning, sir. 
Will you please give me an order for my horse?” I 
could not take him out of the stable without an. order. 
I got the order and for a wonder did not get a calling 
down for going to the colonel. You have not quite given 
up the hope of getting me for another five years, I 
thought. That is why I don’t hear from you in this con- 
nection. 
Starting early next morning I rode clear through to the 
Wachita Agency, getting in there in the middle of the 
afternoon. But I had a good horse, the one that the loco- 
weed had failed to kill, as 1 told about some , time ago. 
And the horse would have ten days to rest up in now. I 
wmuld turn him into the chief’s herd and ride a pony. 
The horse would be at home here, I had had him run- 
ning with these ponies two winters already while I rode 
ponies. 
I needed another pass now, one for my Indians, from 
the agent and asked for it, telling the agent that we would 
need no rations from him. I would buy them at the store 
here. This was another stroke of policy, for this store 
belonged to the agent, but was in another man’s name to 
keep the agent out of hot water with the Indian Bureau. 
I got the pass with less trouble than it had taken me to 
get the first one; then keeping on up to camp I told the 
chief to get ready for a hunt right away. I wanted to 
take about a dozen of his men and boys, and he told me 
to detail those I wanted myself. I did so, then added 
three squaws to- the detail. I wanted the squaws to^ pack, 
drive and cook for us. I would make the boys do part 
of this, they would dO' it if I told them to, but would not 
do it for their sisters if I were not present to make them 
do it. Next morning the chief and I, taking three of his 
mules went down to the store, and here I loaded up the 
mules with about all they could carry of coarse supplies— 
flour, coffee and sugar, baking powder and salt, adding to 
this a good supply of smoking tobacco; the Indians did 
not get much of that now, nor much of anything else 
either, since there were no more buffalo robes to pay for 
it; part of these supplies I meant to give out in camp. 
This would be the last time I would get a chance' to feed 
these Indians for a long time now ; they had often fed me. 
The supplies would cost me about half what they would 
have cost an Indian, had I been a stranger here; but I 
was not a stranger, so they cost me still less. I concluded 
from my bill that agent had seen the storekeeper since 1 
had seen the agent yesterday, and had “put him wise” 
(that seems to be the popular way of expressing this 
now). I might report any excess in these charges to 
Washington, or I might “put the agent in the papers.” . I 
had threatened to do both in his case a few years ago. I 
had no notion then of doing either, but he did not know 
that. I had put another agent in the papers, and I might 
put him in. That was what he did not want. “These 
agents out here were spending the best part of their lives 
in trying to benefit the Indian, while we spent our time 
in finding fault with them.” 
We pulled out' from camp early next morning to go 
on the hunt. I had already used up two of the fifteen 
days now, and did not want to waste any more time if I 
could help it; and so we struck out straight for the 
Canadian River by the shortest route to it, not stopping 
to do any hunting on the way there, and got into the 
valley of the Canadian after two days’ hard riding, strik- 
ing it just west of Fort Elliott; and now we could move 
slower and do a little hunting as we kept on up the river. 
This Canadian River Valley is a fine one. It had been 
less than a year since I had seen it last, then I had ridden 
down the whole length of it alone. There were but two 
ranches in the whole valley then, several more had been 
built in it since then; but the most part of it was out of 
doors yet. Still keeping up the valley we made our last 
camp at White Deer Creek. Deer were what we were 
looking for, and we found plenty of them the whole 
length of the valley. There were large herds of cattle 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
in here and the deer could often be found right among 
the cattle. 
On the afternoon of the day that we wmnt into camp, 
some of the Indian boys w^ent off on a hunt still further 
up the river, and that evening one of the boys, coming 
into the chief’s lodge, reported that he had seen a buffalo 
in the afternoon out on the prairie to the left of the river. 
The buffalo was a mile away from him, he said, and he 
had not tried to run it, his pony would not be fast enough 
and he did not want to^ scare the buffalo off, we could get 
it to-morrow. 
“No,” the chief told him, “you saw nO' buffalo. There 
is none here now to see. The white man has killed them 
all.” 
“Well, it seems that there is still one that the white 
man has not yet killed,” I told him, “but if he keeps him- 
self in this country until to-morrow you or a white man 
will kill him. Which of us does it will depend on which 
of us has the fastest pony. Don’t you suppose that this 
boy knows a buffalo when he sees him? This boy and I 
have killed enough of them for you while we still had 
them here to know them again when we see them.” 
Next morning, leaving only one man and the squaw’S 
in camp, we started to get that buffalo. We kept on up 
the river for nearly fifteen miles, all of us keeping a good 
lookout for the buffalo’s trail, for he would have to come 
in here after water. At last we found it ; he had been in 
here to-day. We followed the trail up on the prairie, 
and, stopping here, I took the chief’s field-glass and swept 
the country with it, and soon saw the buffalo. It hardly 
needed a glass to see him ; he was only about twO' miles 
away and was grazing. 
We started in slowly and had got at least a mile nearer 
him without his seeing us, when the chief gave the signal 
to go for him, and we went at a gallop. I was riding a 
pony that the chief had given me four years before. I 
have never seen another Indian pony and but few cavalry 
horses that could outrun him, and I had made a good 
buffalo pony out of him. The*chief had one of his fast 
ponies but I left him behind now, and the other ponies 
were never in it after we had once started. 
I got to within 6oo yards of the buffalo before he saw 
me and started to run ; but he might as well have stopped 
where he w'as. My pony placed me alongside of him in 
the next quarter of a mile, and a ball out of my Colt’s 
pistol put in just behind his shoulder did the rest. 
The pony ran on a few hundred yards, then pulling him 
up I rode back, and by that time the chief had reached 
the fallen buffalo and had dismounted there. 
“I think this is your last buffalo and mine,” the chief 
said. “If there are any more in this country I don’t know 
it. There may be some up in the north; I haye heard 
that there are.” 
“There are none up there now. The white men have 
killed them off,” I told him, “this one is our last one, I 
think.” 
The buffalo was a young bull, three years old, we 
thought, and was in first-rate condition, he had all this 
country to graze in, he ought to be in pretty good order. 
It was right up here where the Indians had got their 
last of the buffalo before they finally all disappeared.. The 
last winter that any were got at all the Pawnees hunted 
them here and got a few. The other Indians who- hunted 
south and east of this did not get any. Some of them 
came near starving. Our troop patrolled the country that 
winter to watch the Indians, and we had -to give these 
Indians our horses’ corn to keep them alive; the horses 
lived on grass. This old captain of mine had kept me 
going alone all over the country that winter hunting up 
Indians because I “knew the country,” he said, “and 
would not get lost; and I seemed to be able to get along 
with these Indians somehow.” It was then that I found 
the whole Pawnee tribe, over i,ooo of them, up where toy 
camp now was on White Deer Creek, but this is another 
story and I have nearly forgotten the buffalo. 
We got the hide off; then took nealy all of the meat. 
The chief meant to bring it in to the camp on the Wa- 
chita. He dismounted several of the boys to use their 
ponies to pack meat on, telling the boys to strike out on 
foot for camp. 
They were about to start, and as the crow flies, make a 
straight line of it from where we were now to camp. 
“Wait, my brothers,” I told them, “you go back now 
to the river; then go across that smooth grass there to 
camp. It is a long way to it I know, but the way you 
were going is a longer one. You will find many sand 
hills hat. way; you won’t want to climb them on foot. I 
know that country out there, I have been all over it; you 
have not. Don’t go over it to-day.” 
They started off the way I had sent them, and were in 
camp away ahead of us and the ponies. 
The next day was put in hunting deer. We did not ex- 
pect to find any more buffalo, and found none. Our 
squaws were kept busy drying meat on small platforms 
which they built over stone fires. Had we had the time to 
spare to it all this meat would have been dried in the sun. 
The chief wanted to have the robe tanned, then send it up 
to me. 
“No,” I told him, “I won’t be there then. I am going 
home to Washington now (every place outside of the 
Indian Territory was Washington with him). You tan 
[13ec. 23,. igos. 
the robe and sell it to buy rations. This is the last one 
you may ever have to sell,” 
On the second day after killing the buffalo we started 
on the return march, and got into the chief’s camp a 
day before my pass would be up. Then on the following 
morning I started for home and got into the post before 
’^ight. Cabia Blanco. 
On Getting Found. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Apropos of Mr. Hardy’s and Mr. Kephart’s articles on 
getting lost, permit me to give evidence from an incident 
which I know of personally. Some time I intend tO' write 
an article on “the vanity of the outer,” for being one of 
those devotees myself, I have been much interested in 
the psychology of other outers. That is my excuse for 
“butting in” and presuming to place myself on the same 
level as two such experts. 
Now, the personal experience of this young man which 
I am about tO' relate, was contrary to the opinion of these 
gentlemen, largel}^ modified by his remembrance of the 
directions given by our great leader, Nessmuk. 
He left a camp at 8 o’clock in the morning of a gray 
day that threatened snow. He was warmly clad, with 
the felt boots and rubber shoes of a lumberman, and 
heavy reefer, but light gloves and hat. He had his Win- 
chester and eight cartridges. He walked until about 12 
o’clock, in a direction which he afterward found to be 
north, swinging around to the west, and entered a big 
cedar swamp. Fie ran across several signs of deer where 
they had knocked the moss from the top of fallen de- 
cayed logs and saw their tracks in the mud. It is prob- 
able that he lost his memory of direction in his interest 
in these tracks. 
About 2 o’clock the thought came to him that he did 
not know in which direction the camp lav. Now, having- 
only been twice before in woods of any great extent, he 
had little experience, and what knowledge of woodcraft 
he had he had obtained from reading articles in papers 
and magazines and from Nessmuk’s book. He says that 
at once he thought of Nessrnuk’s description of getting 
lost in November and the details were fairly clear in his 
mind. He made his first mistake right here by not bend- 
ing over trees in quite a large circle and tying a white 
handkerchief on one of them and then blazing his way in 
whatever direction he took for camp. The philosophy of 
this course is as follows. By blazing his way he could al- 
ways come back to his starting point, and the handker- 
chief on the bush would at once engage his attention, 
even if he should walk in a circle and come back to the 
same spot on another side. 
Now, I claim that this remembrance of Nessmuk’s di- 
rections was of great advantage to him if they did not 
result in saving his life. One must remember that the 
day ■was gray, that he was in the midst of a cedar swamp, 
and that there were no streams or water courses in his 
vicinity and that he came across none until quite a time 
afterward. He says one sentence in Nessmuk’s book was 
of great comfort to him, which he remembered something 
as follows: “That there was no need of getting excited 
and panicky and that getting lost ought to prove only 
another experience.” 
He traveled until it began to snow, which by his watch 
proved to be about3 :30. He then found a large windfall 
about a foot from the ground. He filled the space under 
the trunk of the tree with moss, leaves, etc., which, being 
very moist in the course of the night, froze into a solid 
mass. He then cut brush and made a lean-to from the 
top of the trunk to the ground, leaving him a space inside 
long enough and wide enough for him to recline. This 
he carpeted with brush, filling in the opening at the head 
with more duff. He built his fire against the upturned 
roots of the tree about twO’ feet from the opening and 
near his feet. He had nothing to eat, but between rust- 
ling for wood and the covering of his ’lean-to by six or 
eight inches of moist snow during the night he was fairly 
warm and comfortable. He found plenty of water by 
stamping in the swamp. The water would then rise in his 
heel marks. 
In the morning he was more uncomfortable from hun- 
ger than anything else. The snow was still falling. He 
started again and probably made about one mile an hour 
for the rest of the day. In the middle of the forenoon 
he shot a rabbit and says that he remembers that it was 
great satisfaction to him that he killed the rabbit with 
one shot, as he realized that he had seven cartridges left. 
At I o’clock he made a fire against a tree and cooked the 
hindquarters of the rabbit. It was a distinct disappoint- 
ment, as he had no salt and he said it did riot allay his 
hunger. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon the snow was still 
falling, but had not fallen enough so as to impede his 
progress much. He built another lean-to, but used a 
rock instead of a tree for one side of it. He cooked the 
remainder of the rabbit. He says he was not the least 
bit frightened, but he speculated considerably upon what 
his companions were doing in camp, and what a good 
story he would have to tell them when he returned. He 
ate the remainder of the rabbit and had a better night 
than the previous night. He was still very hungry and 
he derived the most comfort from drinking water of any- 
