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906
place of concealment down the river there was a shoal, the only one I know of within 100 miles of the place. On this shoal an Indian sentinel on horseback was on guard and Wilson knew this. The water was about four feet deep. When Wilson decided to start he divested himself of clothing except underwear and hat. He hid his trousers in one place, his boots in another and his knife in another all under water. Then taking his gun he attempted to cross the river. This he found to be impossible, so he floated downstream about seventy-five feet where he struck bottom. He stuck down the muzzle of the gun in the sand until the breech came under water and then floated noiselessly down the river. Though the Indians were all around him he fearlessly began his "geta-way." He climbed up a bank and crawled out through a cane brake which fringed the bank, and started out to find me, bare-footed and over ground that was covered with prickly pear, mesquite and other thorny plants. Of course he was obliged to travel by night at first, but fearing starvation used the day some, when he was out of sight of the Indians.
Now Loving and Wilson had ridden ahead of the herd for two nights and the greater part of one day, and since the herd had lain over one day the gap between us must have been something like one hundred miles.
The Pecos River passes down a country that might be termed a plain, and from one to two hundred miles there is not a tributary or break of any kind to mark its course until it reaches the mouth of the Concho, which comes up from the west, where the foothills begin to jut in toward the river. Our trail passed just around one of these hills. In the first of these hills there is a cave which Wilson had located on a prior trip. This cave extended back into the hill some fifteen or twenty feet and in this cave Wilson took refuge from the scorching sun to rest. Then he came out of the cave and looked for the herd and saw it coming up the valley. His brother, who was