Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 166, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 July 1914 — OWED LIFE 10 QUAIL [ARTICLE]

OWED LIFE 10 QUAIL

Hunter’s Experience Seemed Dispensation of Providence.; Pioneer Would Have Been Victim of Indians but for Miraculous interruption That Left Him a' Loaded Gun.

Superstition played an Important part in the lives of the Indians that Inhabited the' prairies ot Kansas in the early days of the Santa Fe trail, says the Kansas City Times. Every trick of fate was “good medicine” or “bad medicine,” and many wonderful, albeit somewhat improbable stories, were circulated about miracnlous escapes from death by white men because of some unconscious act that was dubbed “good medicine” by the Indians. Some tales, however, are true. A Frenchman made “good medicine’ once by t snatching off his wig. An army officer made “mad medicine" by sticking a needle in his hollow wooden leg. He wasn’t killed, barely escaping With his life after a severe beating. The long absence from their white fellows by traders and trappers and their close life with the savages made the hardy frontiersmen who blazed the trails of the West more or less superstitious. A story which will illustrate this was told to Col. Henry Inman by “Uncle Johnny” Smith, an early day character, while the two were scouting along the Washita river. Others corroborated ft. The two, in company with other scouts, were waiting for the soldiers. Their diet had become rather monotonous. When a hunter appeared one day with a mess of quail he was hailed with delight—by all except Uncle Johnny. He refused to eat quail, because, he said, one had once saved his life. “ 1 He was on his way from the Yellowstone to Independence, Mo., in 1847, with some companions, Boyd and Thorp among them. A wandering party of Apaches overtook them in western Kansas. Fresh meat-had been scarce with the travelers, so one morning when several buffalo appeared they prepared to have a meal or two of buffalo steak. The Indians had not disclosed themselves as yet. “About the time I could fairly see things,’ related Uncle Johnny, “I discovered three or four buffalo grazing off on the creek bottom, about a halt mile. . . . I seed Boyd and Thorp start out from camp with their rifles and make for the buffalo, so I picketed the ponies, gets my rifle, and starts off, too. “By the time I reached the edge of the bottom, Thorp and Boyd was a crawling up onto a young bull way

off to the right, and I lit out for a fat cow I seen bunched up with the rest of the herd on the left. The grass was mighty tall on some parts of the Arkansas bottom in them days, and I got within easy shooting range without the herd seeing me. “The buffalo was now between me and Thorp and Boyd and they was further from camp. I could see them over the top of the grass kind o’ edging up to the bull, and I kept a-crawl-ing on my hands and knees toward the cow, and when I got about 150 yards of her I pulled up my rifle and drawed a bead. Just as I was running my eye along the bar! a darned little quail flew right from under my feet and lit exactly on my front sight, and of course cut off my aim—we didn’t shoot reckless in them days; Every shot had to tell, or a man was the laughing stock for a month if he missed his game. “I'ihook the little critter'Off and brought my rifle up again when, dura iny skin. if the bird didn’t light right onto the-same place. At the same time my eyes growed kind o’ hazy like and in a minute I didn’t know nothing. When I come to the quail was gone. I heard a couple ot rifle shots and right in front of where the bull had stood and close to Thorp and Boyd, half a dozen Indians jumped up out o’ the tall grass, and, firing into the two men, killed Thorp instantly and wounded Boyd. Him and me got to Camp —keeping the Indians off, who knowed t was loaded —when we, with the rest of the outfit, drove the red devils away. \ "You see, boys, if I’d fired Into that cow the devils would a had me before I could get a patch on my ball —didn't have no breechloaders in them days. Them Indians knowed all that They knowed I hadn't fired, so they kept a respectable distance.”