Free Far as the Eye Can See by Robert Bausch Page A

you had to lean down to let it bang against your hat or you’d come away with skin cut just as bad as if a warrior sliced at you with a hunting knife.
    We seen a three-legged wild pig chase down a groundhog and kill it with one powerful bite. The pig seemed to yell something to us when it was done. Like it wanted us to come on over and see what he might do with that snout on one of us. Theo said, “There’s a reason the Cheyenne call them things devil dogs.”
    We continued north and west, and left the army behind when we crossed the Republican River in Nebraska. In a few days we was into Colorado Territory, headed to Fort Sedgwick. By the time we got there I was feeling pretty well at home in the big West. I known what I was doing. Big Tree showed me how to clean the meat off a buffalo, then wrap it in the skin and make a big package that we could carry along with us. We did the same thing to most everything we killed except for the fowl. Them we pulled the feathers, gutted, and hung up on thongs to dry a little before we cooked them up the same day. The wrapped meat would last a long time. Wrapped up in the bloody skin and hung up on poles to dry out, it tasted fresh even several days after we killed it.
    There was never a shortage of water. We crossed many streams and small rivers, and moved for miles and miles across open meadows and fields that stretched before us, with the great, loyal, blue-and-white Rocky Mountains always in sight—either in front of us or to one side or the other. I never dreamed there could be such a country.
    Every now and then we’d come upon a village. Twenty or thirty lodges with good fires and children running and dogs barking, and women tanning skins or washing clothes, and the braves would come out and greet us. They’d sign to us if they didn’t speak Crow or English. We come upon Arapahos, Northern Cheyenne, Arikaras, Blackfeet, and Sioux. They was always pretty friendly, even the Sioux. We didn’t have one scrape. The worst thing that happened was that we almost killed two fellows that turned out to be scouts for the U.S. Army.
    This was after the army from Fort Riley had left us. We had just crossed the Republican River and was still in Nebraska, but not far from Fort Sedgwick, when two men wearing leather leggings, buckskin vests, and not much else, rode up over the horizon in front of the lead wagon and stopped. They seemed shocked to see us, then turned around and skedaddled. Big Tree and me rode after them a-ways, but they disappeared. We stopped—I thought to wait for the train to catch up—but then Big Tree moved off the trail a bit and I followed him. He never got off his horse. He pulled the animal around to face the trail. He carried a Sharps rifle with feathers dangling off the front of it, and he kept it at the ready while he watched. He said nothing. I held my carbine across the front of my saddle and waited with him. Then, before the wagon come up over the rise, we heard them two fellows coming back. They rode along, crossing in front of us, slow and steady. They had another with them, a big man in blue cavalry pants, with a yellow stripe down the leg and a bright red shirt. He had long black hair that stuck out under a black hat. He wore a mustache that hung all the way down to the neck of his shirt. When they’d passed in front of us, Big Tree looked at me and then moved out in the trail behind them. I followed.
    We all rode like that until the first wagon come into sight. I didn’t know if them fellows known we was behind them or not. When the train come into full view, Theo stopped it. He sat there for a spell, waiting. Then he give the reins to his wife and climbed down out of his wagon. Big Tree made his presence known by trotting out a little to my right so them three fellows could see him. His Sharps was pointed right at the big black-haired man. The two others didn’t seem to mind it much that they was staring down the barrel of Big Tree’s gun. I rode