Life and Adventures of 'Billy' Dixon

After the mules had taken a few plunges, the current caught up our wagon and whirled it over and over like a top. When I saw that the mules would have to swim for it, I sprang into the water to help the frightened animals, getting on their upper side and seizing the mule nearest me by his bridle. In this way I was able to keep his head above water. The other mule, terrified by its surroundings, alternately rose and sank. We saw that if the wagon kept turning over, the team might get drowned, so we cut the harness, and after the greatest exertion got the mules ashore. The near mule lay down on the sand and died without a struggle. It seemed ridiculous that the mule should succumb after being taken from the water, yet there he lay. Old Tobe was saved. The wagon drifted down stream about sixty yards and lodged against the bank. We pulled it out of the river next day. Our greatest misfortune was the loss of our guns.

When we lined up on the north side of the river we were a sorry lot – two bedraggled, unarmed men and a water-logged mule three miles from Adobe Walls, in danger of attack by Indians at any moment. Ordinarily, I was not easily discouraged. This, however, was a jolt from the shoulder. I stood in greatest need of my gun, a big "50." We could dig out the wagon, but not the guns, and somewhere in the depths of the Canadian they are rusting this very day.

We were a sorrowful pair as we started up the valley for Adobe Walls, leading old Tobe and leaving old Joe to bleach on the Canadian sands. Unwilling to let the other walk, neither of us would ride. I had lost my hat in the river, and my clothing was plastered with mud and sand.

Upon coming in sight of Adobe Walls, we were quickly discovered, and our disordered appearance convinced the men that we had been attacked by Indians – possibly we were the only survivors of a desperate encounter. We found Adobe Walls buzzing with talk about Indians. The particulars of the killing of the men on Chicken Creek were now learned. Their names were Dudley and Wallace. They were camped on the south side of the creek near where the Ledrick brothers now have a ranch. Dudley, Wallace and Joe Plummer were hunting together from this camp. Plummer went to Adobe Walls for supplies. Upon his return he was horrified to find the dead bodies of his two companions. Through the breast of one had been driven a heavy wooden stake, pinning him to the ground. Both were scalped, and otherwise mutilated in a shocking manner.

Looking away from his camp, Plummer said he saw objects at a distance which he felt sure were Indians. Realizing that the next thing for him to do was to try to save his life, he cut the harness from one of his horses, mounted and dashed away toward Adobe Walls.

The news he brought caused much excitement, as these were the first men that had been killed since the building of Adobe Walls. When Plummer reached the Walls there were only a few men there, but he managed to get two buffalo-hunters to go back with him to bury the dead. A party of fifteen surveyors, employed by the State of Texas, and in charge of a man named Maddox, had just arrived in that section. I am told that this was the first surveying ever done in the Panhandle, and that the Maddox survey still holds good. The surveyors' camp was on Johns' Creek. Plummer had halted there on his way to Adobe Walls, to warn the men against the Indians. When Plummer returned, the members of the surveying party joined him to help bury the dead. No further indignities had been offered the bodies, which were buried on the spot. The horses, still in their harness were found grazing in the valley. Plummer gathered up the outfit and went to Adobe Walls – the surveyors kept going straight south, fully satisfied that soldiers, not surveyors, were what the country most needed.

Hearing all this, I was impatient to return to my own camp as quickly as possible, but was detained by the necessity of buying a mate for my mule, which was beset with difficulties. Finally, I managed to buy a horse. My next obstacle to overcome was to replace the gun I had lost in the Canadian. The best I was able to do was to buy what was called a round-barrel Sharp's. I had left camp in such a hurry that I failed to take my six-shooter, an oversight of which I was rarely guilty in those days. I had been absent three days when I got back to my camp.

The evening before I left Adobe Walls, another hunter came in with Indian news. His name was Moore. He said that two days previously two men had been killed by Indians in his camp on a tributary of Salt Fork of Red River, north of where Clarendon, Texas, is now situated. The names of the dead men were John Jones, nicknamed "Cheyenne Jack," a young Englishman, and "Blue Billy," a German. The camp was destroyed and all the stock run off.

"Cheyenne Jack" belonged to an influential family in England. His relatives, several years later, made inquiry through the British diplomatic service, in communication to the commanding officer at Fort Elliott, Texas, as to the whereabouts of the unfortunate man's remains. I was directed to find where the body had been buried. It was a week after Moore reported these murders before a party went from Adobe Walls to bury the dead men. Jones and his companion had fallen in the bed of a creek in a grove of timber, right in camp. While Moore was absent, a flood came down the creek and carried the bodies and the whole camp away. The bodies could not be found.

Before leaving the Walls to go to my camp, I got "Brick" Bond, now living at Dodge City, Kansas, to accompany me. I was fearful that the Indians had attacked my camp and possibly killed Albright and "Frenchy." Happily, I found them alive and ignorant of what had been going on in the country south of the Walls.

All of us agreed that a blind man could see that it was entirely too risky to stay in camp with Indians all around us, so we lost no time in loading our outfit and pulling into Adobe Walls, arriving there by noon the next day. The story of the Indian depredations had spread to all the hunting camps, and by the time we reached the Walls a large crowd had gathered in from the surrounding country. We remained here for about a week.

An odd thing about this Indian excitement was that none of the hunters had seen an Indian nor a sign of one. The Indians evidently had carefully picked their time, watching closely and waiting until only two or three men were in camp, whereupon they attacked and then slipped stealthily away. All of us felt that these murders had been perpetrated as a warning to the buffalo-hunters to leave the country – to go north of the "dead line."

Every man of us was dead set against abandoning the buffalo range. The herds were now at hand, and we were in a fair way to make a pile of money. Furthermore, the buffaloes were becoming scarcer and scarcer each year, and it was expedient that we make hay while the sun shone, for soon the sun would be no longer shining in the buffalo business. Its night was close at hand. We decided that the best and safest plan would be for three or four outfits to throw in together and all occupy the same camp. After all, it was not unusual to hear of two or three buffalo-hunters being killed and scalped every year, and perhaps there would be no further outbreaks by the Indians. It was agreed, however, that everybody should be very careful and take every precaution against surprise and attack.

When we started back to the range, most of us went west and north of the Walls, as the Indians were supposed to be camped on the headwaters of the Washita and the Sweetwater, south of us, their main summer camp grounds. But I was so in love with my location on Dixon Creek, southwest of the Walls, that I resolved to take the risk and establish myself at that point, and went there with three skinners I had hired.

We had left a lot of hides at this camp, and began hauling them to Adobe Walls, which took several days. I felt uneasy all the time. Something seemed to be wrong. There was Indian in the air, and I could not shake myself loose from thinking about the possible danger, so I told my men that it might be well for us to get over on the north side of the Canadian. We broke camp and went to Adobe Walls, to increase our stock of supplies for a stay near the head of Moore's Creek.

We were buying supplies to last us two months, and were ready to start next day. Late in the evening James Hanrahan came to me and said:

"Billy, where are you going?"

"Northwest," I answered.

Hanrahan then asked me how it would suit me for the two of us to throw in together. He said he had been having trouble in getting a man who could hunt fast enough to keep his skinners busy. Hanrahan owned a big outfit, and usually had seven skinners. I told him that nothing would please me more than to go into partnership with him, and that I could easily kill enough buffaloes to keep twenty skinners hard at work every day. Hanrahan offered to give me half of all the profits, which was as liberal as any man could wish for.

Our wagons were all assembled and loaded, in readiness for us to pull out next morning, June 27, 1874.

It might be well to describe the exact location of the buildings and the nature of their surroundings. All the buildings at Adobe Walls faced to the east, the main ones standing in a row. On the south was the store of Rath & Wright, with a great pile of buffalo hides at the rear. Then came Hanrahan's saloon, and fifty yards or so north of the latter was the store of Leonard & Myers, the building forming the northeast corner of the big picket stockade. In the southwest corner of the stockade was a mess house, and between the mess house and the store was a well. The blacksmith's shop was located just north of Hanrahan's saloon.

The adobe walls of the main buildings were about two feet thick. The door of Rath & Wright's store opened to the west, while that of Leonard & Myers looked to the east.

Bent's Creek, west of the Walls, flowed from the northwest in a southeasterly direction to the Canadian, passing close to the ruins of old Adobe Walls, about a mile and a quarter south of the new Adobe Walls. On the north side of Bent's Creek, southwest of the buildings, was a hill, north of which the land was smoother and afterwards a part of the Turkey Track Ranch pasture.

East of Adobe Walls lay the open valley of Adobe Walls Creek, terminating in a growth of willows, cottonwoods, hackberry, chinaberry, and stunted elms that fringed this stream, on the other side of which, at a distance of about twelve hundred yards from Leonard & Myer's store stood a butte-like hill of considerable height, with a more or less level bench near the summit, caused by the sliding and falling of debris from the crest. Several hundred yards southeast were the low sandhills of the Canadian, whose wide expanse of level sand was more than a mile away.

The season had advanced so slowly, and the buffaloes had been so long coming north, that we had done comparatively little hunting, and all of us were impatient to be up and gone. O'Keefe was doing a big business at his blacksmith's shop, pounding away hour after hour, repairing the wagons on which the buffalo hides were to be hauled from the hunting grounds to the traders at Adobe Walls. My wagon was in front of the shop, O'Keefe having finished repairing it.

I had been unable to replace my big "50," lost in the Canadian, with a gun that suited me in every way, but it was highly important that I should be well-armed if I expected to fulfill my promises to Hanrahan.

The only gun at the Walls that was not in use was a new "44" Sharp's, which was next best to a "50." This gun had been spoken for by a hunter who was still out in camp; he was to pay $80 for it, buying it from Langton who was in charge of Rath & Wright's store. Langton told me that if necessary he would let me have the gun, as he had ordered a case of guns and was expecting them to arrive any day on the freight train from Dodge City, and he probably would have them in stock before the owner of the gun came in from the buffalo range. News came in that night, the evening of June 26, 1874, that the freight wagons were camped on the flats north of the Walls and, of course, would show up in a day or two. Langton also heard that the man to whom he had promised the gun was not coming for several days, so he hunted me up and told me I might have the gun.

I went right over to his store and got the "44," together with a full case of ammunition. I was so tickled over my good luck, that I took the gun over to Hanrahan's saloon, to show it to him. After we had looked the gun over, I set it down in the corner for the night, intending to get it when we said good bye to the Walls next morning, headed for our camp on the buffalo range. For some reason which I can not explain, even to myself, I left the case of ammunition with Langton, little dreaming how greatly I would regret my carelessness.

By this time the excitement and talk about the fate of the four men who had been killed by Indians had subsided, and we paid no further attention to the matter, so busily were we engaged in our preparations for departure. Several hunters had come in that day, and we planned to stay up late that night, celebrating our return to the range, telling stories of past experiences and joking about how much money we would have when the hunt was over.

The night was sultry and we sat with open doors. In all that vast wilderness, ours were the only lights save the stars that glittered above us. There was just a handful of us out there on the Plains, each bound to the other by the common tie of standing together in the face of any danger that threatened us. It was a simple code, but about the best I know of. Outside could be heard at intervals the muffled sounds of the stock moving and stumbling around, or a picketed horse shaking himself as he paused in his hunt for the young grass. In the timber along Adobe Walls Creek to the east owls were hooting. We paid no attention to these things, however, and in our fancied security against all foes frolicked and had a general good time. Hanrahan did a thriving trade.