By the time we had our pack fixed on our pack horses’ backs, every man and woman and all the children were around us to bid us farewell and good speed on our journey back to Taos, New Mexico.

We had shaken hands with probably a hundred or more when Jim sprang upon his horse all at once, saying, “Now friends, we will consider we have all shaken hands,” and he took off his hat and, waving it to the assembled crowd, gathered up his reins and galloped away, and I followed suit.  But as long as we were in hearing distance we could hear, “Good bye, good bye,” floating on the wind.  As the sight of the train faded in the distance, we waved our hats for the last time.

For the next two days everything went smoothly with Jim and me, which brought us to Honey Lake.  The night we reached Honey Lake, we camped in a little grove of timber near a pearling stream of cool, sparkling water about a half a mile south of the trail.

We had eaten our supper and were about to spread our blankets and turn in for the night when we heard a dog bark close to our camp, but it was too dark to see him.  Jim said, “Don’t that beat any thing you ever heard?”

We listened a moment, and then it was a howl, and then in a moment he barked again.  Jim said, “You stay in camp, Will, and I will take my gun and see what is the matter.”

In a moment Jim called, “I see him.”  I waited about an hour before Jim came back and was beginning to feel anxious about him.  When I heard his footsteps, he said, “I followed that dog nearly a mile, and then I found the cause of his howling, and what do you think it was?” I answered, “Jim, I have no idea,” to which he said, “Well, I will tell you.  I found the body of a dead man laying on his blanket just as if he was laying down to rest.  I did not get near the dog until I had discovered the body, and then he was very friendly with me, and came and whined, and wagged his tail, as if he knew me.  I looked all around, but I could find nothing but the body laying on the blanket.  I could not see that there had been a fire, and I saw no signs of a horse or anything else, and the strange part of it is that, although the dog was so friendly with me, I could not coax him away from the body which I suppose was his master.”

I asked Jim what he thought it was best to do.  He answered, “What can we do, Will?  We have no tools to dig a grave with, and the body is laying among the rocks, and I expect that dog will stay beside it and starve to death.”

“Wouldn’t it be a good idea to go to the place in the morning and pile rocks on the body to keep the wolves and other wild animals from eating it up?” Jim said, “Yes, we will do that, and we will shoot some jack-rabbits and leave them with the dog, so he can have something to eat for a few days anyhow.”

On the way over to the place where the body lay, we killed three rabbits and threw them to the dog, and he ate them as if he was nearly starved, and I have always thought that his master died of starvation, as he had no gun or pistol with which to kill anything to eat, and Jim thought that he must have got lost from some emigrant train and wandered around until he was too weak to go farther and lay down and died with no one but his faithful dog to watch over him in his last moments.