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1034
Mr. Walker and several of the Slater hands went to Riley's assistance and found him surrounded by about 80 Indians. They were off their reservation, and did not really want a scrap, so when they fired into them they hastily retreated. Mr. Walker killed the chief's horse at a distance of 500 yards. He was later arrested by the Indian agent, and Slater gave the Indians five head of cattle to satisfy their claims for loss of the chief's horse.
After delivering the cattle at the Winters Ranch the cowboys scattered, and only two of them, Billings and Riley, came back to Texas together. Mr. Walker went to Los Angeles and San Francisco and struck up with a man named Jacob Sanders who was from Ohio, and they decided to go to New York. Accordingly they secured passage on a steamer, the Golden City, which sailed one Sunday morning. On the following Tuesday the steamer was wrecked in Mexican waters and the crew and 450 passengers were forced to take to lifeboats and landed on the barren coast. In company with a guide the shipwrecked people walked a distance of twenty-five miles to a cove, and were there taken aboard a vessel that carried them back to San Francisco. While on the coast they were without food and had but very little water from Tuesday until Saturday. As Walker and Sanders paid transportation to New York, the steamship company allowed them passage on another vessel and they again started. He says they crossed the Isthmus of Panama, and took a big steamer which carried them across the Gulf of Mexico and ran direct to New York. Arriving in that city, Mr. Walker decided he had seen enough of the world and immediately started back to Texas by water, reaching Key West, Fla., and from there proceeded to Galveston and when he hit land again it was to hike straight for home. He had been absent one year and four months, and came back rich in experience, but mighty poor in pocket. On the same day he was