"We shall be sorry to lose your company, captain," I replied; "but, if you are going in to-morrow, why not take your antelope along as a trophy of the trip? The weight will not be much, and we can fit it behind the cantle of your saddle and tie it on so it will ride nicely."
"Yes," added Jack, "but that will have to be done to-night, for it'll freeze hard before morning, and then you can't fit it on. I'll fix it now."
He placed Saunders's saddle upon some sacks of grain, bent the antelope carcass to fit snugly behind the cantle, tying the feet down to the cinch rings, and left it to freeze in that position.
After supper Jack played the fiddle awhile, and we sang some songs; but Saunders seemed more interested in drawing us out to tell of our soldier experiences on the frontier and kept us yarn spinning till late bedtime. In the morning, after breakfast, he struck the trail for Fort Larned.
For the next week or two, although the weather had turned stormy, Jack and I put in all the time we could at poisoning and skinning wolves. It was now getting well along in February--nearing the close of the season for taking pelts. We had already taken about twenty-five hundred and were anxious to make our winter's catch an even three thousand before quitting.
Tom's patient, old To hausen, had so far recovered that Tom had returned to our camp, but still made an occasional visit to the Kiowa village, where, on account of his success in treating the old chief and others, his services as medicine-man were now much sought by the afflicted Indians, to the utter neglect of old Broken Nose, their own medicine-man, who seemed jealous of Tom's popularity.
One day Jack had gone out alone, riding old Vinegar the buckskin bronco, to kill some buffalo, and in a short time he came back to camp afoot, carrying his saddle and bridle.
"What's happened? Where's Vinegar?" we asked anxiously.
"Vinegar's done for--dead," he answered as he threw down the saddle and bridle, "an' I'm in big luck myself to be here to tell it. It was this way: I was chasin' a bull, an' shot him but had got too close or the bronco was too slow turnin' to get away--anyway the bull got his head under Vinegar an' heaved both him an' me into the air, an' we come down in a heap; but by good luck the buffalo went on without stopping to make further fight, or he might easy have finished both of us. I scrambled to my feet, Vinegar still lying where he fell, with his paunch ripped open an' entrails hanging out. With a great effort he got up onto his feet, but his insides were hanging to the ground, and there he stood a-looking at me pleading like an' a-groaning as much as to ask me to put him out of his misery, which was all I could do for him; so I put my pistol to his head and finished him."