Both towns and
ranches were filled with rough customers; all of my brother's companions
were muscular, hot-headed fellows; and as a consequence they were
involved in several savage free fights, in which, fortunately, nobody
was seriously hurt. My brother kept a very brief diary, the entries
being fairly startling from their conciseness. A number of times, the
mention of their arrival, either at a halting-place, a little village,
or a rival buffalo-camp is followed by the laconic remark, "big fight,"
or "big row"; but once they evidently concluded discretion to be
the better part of valor, the entry for January 20th being, "On the
road--passed through Belknap--too lively, so kept on to the Brazos--very
late." The buffalo-camps in particular were very jealous of one another,
each party regarding itself as having exclusive right to the range it
was the first to find; and on several occasions this feeling came near
involving my brother and his companions in serious trouble.
While slowly driving the heavy wagons to the hunting grounds they
suffered the usual hardships of plains travel.
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