The Wolf Hunters: A Story of the Buffalo PlainsPeck, Robert Morris
General
The Wolf Hunters: A Story of the Buffalo Plains
Peck, Robert Morris
Frontier and pioneer life -- Kansas; Hunting -- Kansas
A few days later, on the arrival of Mr. Kitchen's train, we transferred
our team and camp outfit to him, as per agreement, divided up the cash
proceeds of our expedition, and the wolf hunters disbanded, promising
to keep track of each other in the future by correspondence.
Then Jack and Tom started East, intending to travel together as far as
Pennsylvania.
I parted with my dear comrades with sincere regret, fearing that in the
vicissitudes of the great war then getting under good headway, I might
never see them again.
When next I heard from Jack he had re-enlisted and was back in the old
company again. In the war he did gallant service and received some
honorable scars, re-enlisted again after the war and in his last
enlistment took service in the Seventh Cavalry, and was one of the last
remnant of that doomed band who with their gallant leader met a heroic
death on that fatal knoll by the Little Big Horn River on Sunday, June
25, 1876. With few serious faults, and many virtues, our untutored,
wild Irishman was a brave, unselfish, and manly man.
Tom carried out his plan of using his money for the benefit of his
widowed sister and her children on the little farm in Pennsylvania, saw
them comfortably fixed, and then went to Washington, where, through the
influence of army officers who had known him in the service he obtained
a commission as captain in a volunteer cavalry regiment, soon rose to
be colonel of the regiment, and at the close of the war was a brevet
brigadier-general, commanding a brigade.
He had hoped when the war ended to obtain a commission in the regular
army, but his wounds so far disabled him as to unfit him for active
service in the regulars. He was, therefore, compelled to accept a
pension and retired to the little farm to try to content himself with
the dull life of citizen.
After years of perilous adventures and desperate encounters on the
frontier, Wild Bill was finally assassinated in the city of Deadwood,
South Dakota, by a wretched gambler.
And I? Well, of course, I married "the girl I left behind me" in
Leavenworth City, for which piece of wisdom--or good fortune--I have
always congratulated myself. After getting married I took service with
Uncle Sam as a wagon-master, in which capacity I served through the
Civil War, in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, and the Indian Nation.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Afterward Fort Lyon, on the Arkansas River, and later abandoned.
The site is within a few miles of the present town of Lamar, Colorado.
[B] James Butler Hickock, better known as Wild Bill, was a famous
character in Kansas and the West from 1860 to 1876. In 1861 he was
sometimes called "Indian Bill" or "Buckskin Bill," but the nickname
"Wild Bill" soon became so firmly fixed that few people knew his real
name.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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