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the Indians had the day before murdered the Stringfield family. The oldest girl was later found by Mexicans, and she is now living in San Antonio. Two little boys, aged four and six years, respectively, were taken away by the Indians and the oldest of the two was found dead by the roadside with his head split open, but the other was never heard from.
The following spring I hired to an outfit to go to Kansas with a herd which we received in the mountains about fifty miles above Uvalde. While we were herding the cattle in the valley Indians would appear on the mountains and bow to us and make signs which we did not understand. I went out one day to hunt for a bunch of our horses and found a bunch of Indians instead. They took after me, but I outran them back to camp. I guess my eyes were out of fix, for it seemed to me that there were about a hundred redskins in the band, but investigation later proved that there were only about fifteen. Ten men of our outfit went back over the ground and found three arrows they had shot at me while in the race. About the last of March we got our herd of 1,500 beeves road-branded and, starting with them, we soon reached Red River, which we crossed at Red River Station into the Indian Territory. The Territory at that time was unsettled, nothing there except buffalo, Indians and fugitives from other states. These men would steal and rob and lay it on the Indians, so we had to guard our horses every night to prevent them from being stolen. One night a Mexican boy and myself were on guard and the Mexican struck a match to light his cigarette and as he did so somebody shot at us three times in quick succession, and when we returned the fire the boys at camp rushed out to our assistance. The scheme was to scare us away from our horses so they could get them. At Abilene, Kansas, we found a wide open town. Ben Thompson and Hill Coe were running the noted Bull Head saloon, and Wild Bill Hickok was city marshal.