Life and adventures of "Billy" Dixon of Adobe Walls, Texas panhandle : $b A narrative in which is described many things relating to the early SouthwestDixon, Billy
History
Life and adventures of "Billy" Dixon of Adobe Walls, Texas panhandle : $b A narrative in which is described many things relating to the early Southwest
Dixon, Billy
Frontier and pioneer life -- Texas; Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.); Indians of North America -- Wars -- 1866-1895
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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