After laying around the Fort a few days, Col.  Bent and Mr. Roubidoux hired Jonnie and me to kill meat to supply the table at the boarding house for the summer, that being the only time of the year that the boarding house at the Fort did any business.  At this time of the year all of the trappers and hunters were staying at the fort with nothing to do but eat, drink and spend their money that they had earned the winter before.  It was no uncommon thing for some of these men to bring from three to four hundred dollars worth of furs to Bent’s Fort in the spring, and when fall came and it was time to go back to the trapping ground, they wouldn’t have a dollar left, and some of them had to go in debt for their winter outfit.

Jonnie and I had no trouble in keeping plenty of meat on hand, from the fact that buffalo and antelope were very plentiful eight or ten miles from the fort.  I remember one little circumstance that occurred this summer.  We were out hunting, not far from the Arkansas river, near the city now known as Rocky Ford, Colo.  We had camped there the night before.  We went out early in the morning to kill some antelope, leaving our horses staked where we had camped.  We hadn’t gone more than half a mile when we heard a Lofa wolf howl just ahead of us.  The Lofa wolf was a very large and ferocious animal and was a terror to the buffalo.  When we reached the top of a ridge just ahead of us, looking down into a little valley two or three hundred yards away, we saw five Buffalo cows with their calves, and one large bull, and they were entirely surrounded by Lofa wolves.  Jonnie said, “Now, Will, we will see some fun.”  The cows were trying to defend their calves from the wolves, and the bull started off with his head lowered to the ground, trying to drive the wolves away with his horns.  This he continued to do until he had driven the wolves thirty yards away.  All at once a wolf made a bark and a howl which seemed to be a signal for a general attack, for in a moment, the wolves were attacking the Buffalo on every side, and I don’t think it was five minutes before they had the bull dead and stretched out.  Until then I had never thought that wolves would attack a well Buffalo, but this sight convinced me that they could and would kill any buffalo they chose to attack.

We went back to camp, packed up our meat, and pulled out for the fort.  When we got there I told Jim Bridger about the fight the wolves had with the buffalos, and he said, “If you had seen as much of that as I have, you would know that wolves signal to each other and understand each other the same as men do.”

CHAPTER II.