During the whole journey of twenty-three days we slept under a roof only three nights, and usually made our camp away from the mail stations (which could afford us no accommodations, anyhow), and in order to have better pasture for the animals.
Here let me say a word in behalf of the much-abused mule. You have been told that he will kick the hat off your head while you are on his back. This is a slander. A horse will kick when he is violently and cruelly treated, but a mule very seldom does, and ours were as gentle as pet dogs. They roamed unfettered and untethered about the camp day and night, but would come in at call.
On the Concho River we encountered herds of buffalo, now extinct in Texas, not so many as I had often seen on the Northern plains, but many—hundreds and thousands.
I never had the desire, as many had, to wantonly butcher these lubberly animals, but almost every man has inherited the hunter’s instinct, and I indulged it to some extent, making the excuse that we needed fresh meat, as indeed we did.
Shooting antelope was far better sport, but these, like the buffalo and the wild deer and the Indian, will soon be but traditions, and there will be no frontier at all. Mrs. Mills had never seen an antelope, and the first one I shot fell some distance from the ambulance, and I called out, with some pride, “Send a couple of men to bring in this antelope.” She repeated my command, mimicking my voice and manner, and then said, “Why don’t you pick the thing up and bring it yourself?” She said she supposed it was about the size of a jack-rabbit.
A few days later I alone killed three of these animals within three hundred yards of our “train,” and _in less than half a minute_. There were a hundred or more of them on the flat top of a little hill, and I climbed to the top unseen, and with a repeating rifle fired into the bunch at about thirty yards. They ran toward me, and I fired seven shots in quick succession with the result given above. The frightened, crazy herd of beautiful animals ran toward our little “train” and passed on each side of it and the colored soldier fired about twenty shots at them, but not one took effect. Although it was midwinter, the weather was pleasant with the exception of two or three cold days. There was no snow or rain on this whole trip.