I made a rule with myself when I first left the train to ride eight hours and then stop and let my horse rest and feed four hours.  This rule I followed day and night, except a few times I overslept, but I gave my horse his feed and rest just the same, and I was back at Bent’s Fort on the twenty-third day after leaving there with the train.

The next morning after I got there, Capt.  McKee arrived, and he was very much surprised to find me there before him.  He had made arrangements for Col.  Bent to pay me for piloting the train through the Comanche country, and Col.  Bent settled with me that day.  The next morning Capt.  McKee and I began our preparations for our journey to Texas.  He had thirty-two men with him when he came to the fort, and eight more joined us there, making forty in all.  Each man had two saddle horses, and there was one pack horse to every four men.  Everything being ready, we left Bent’s Fort on what would be considered in these days of rapid transit a long and tiresome journey on horse back, over trackless mountains and plains, through valleys, across rivers, in danger of attacks from wild animals and still wilder red men.

I think we traveled between four and five hundred miles without seeing a white person.  We camped and lay over one day to give our horses rest where the thriving little city of Amarillo now stands.  At that time we had no idea that vast prairie would ever be inhabited by the white race.  That part of Texas was the greatest country for Antelope at the time I am speaking of that I had ever seen.  Some days we saw a thousand or more Antelope in one drove.

We now began to see plenty of Indian signs all along where we traveled.  There were no roads or trails to guide us.  We had traveled down what is now called the Pan Handle country, to where the city of Bowie now stands, before we saw a white person after we left Bent’s Fort.  We met three men there.  They were going around through the country hunting for men to assist them to look after a settlement that had been attacked by the Indians the night before.  They did not know what tribe had made the attack.  Capt.  McKee said, “We will go with you and assist you if you will lead us to the place.”

We all struck out with the men, and after riding perhaps five miles, we came to the settlement and found that one man had been killed and all the horses and cattle belonging to the people had been driven off.

Capt.  McKee asked if they knew what tribe of Indians had made the attack.  They answered that they did not know, as it was very dark when the Indians first came, and they could not see them, but they had a skirmish with them, and one man was killed, and the Indians drove the horses and cattle off in a southerly direction.  The Capt. asked me if I thought it would be best to follow the savages and try to take the horses and cattle away from them.

I said, “Capt., these people have lost everything they had to depend on to get a living, and what will they do if someone does not do something to help them?  And all the way to do that is to get their horses and cattle and return them to the owners.”