Chief of Scouts

Chief of Scouts

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chief of Scouts, by W.F. Drannan
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Title: Chief of Scouts
Author: W.F. Drannan
Release Date: July 12, 2004 [EBook #12895]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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SCOUTS ***

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[Illustration: Captain William F. Drannan, Chief of Scouts.]
CAPT. W.F. DRANNAN,
CHIEF OF SCOUTS,
As Pilot to Emigrant and Government Trains, Across the Plains of the

Wild West of Fifty Years Ago.
AS TOLD BY HIMSELF,
AS A SEQUEL TO HIS FAMOUS BOOK "THIRTY ONE YEARS
ON THE PLAINS AND IN THE MOUNTAINS."
_Copiously Illustrated by E. BERT SMITH._
1910

PREFACE
The kindly interest with which the public has received my first book,
"Thirty-one Years on the Plains and in the Mountains," has tempted me
into writing this second little volume, in which I have tried to portray
that part of my earlier life which was spent in piloting emigrant and
government trains across the Western Plains, when "Plains" meant
wilderness, with nothing to encounter but wild animals, and wilder,
hostile Indian tribes. When every step forward might have spelt disaster,
and deadly danger was likely to lurk behind each bush or thicket that
was passed.
The tales put down here are tales of true occurrences,--not fiction. They
are tales that were lived through by throbbing hearts of men and
women, who were all bent upon the one, same purpose:--to plow
onward, onward, through danger and death, till their goal, the "land of
gold," was reached, and if the kind reader will receive them and judge
them as such, the purpose of this little book will be amply and
generously fulfilled.
W.F.D.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12
[Illustration: The Attack Upon the Train.]
ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM DRAWINGS BY E. BERT SMITH.

Captain W.F. Drannan, Chief of Scouts
With the exception of Carson, we were all scared
As soon as they were gone, I took the Scalp off the dead Chief's head
The first thing we knew the whole number that we had first seen were
upon us
Waving my hat, I dashed into the midst of the band
Fishing with the girls
They raced around us in a circle
The mother bear ran up to the dead cub and pawed it with her feet
The next morning we struck the trail for Bent's Fort
I took the lead
I bent over him and spoke to him, but he did not answer

[Illustration: With the exception of Carson, we were all scared.]
CHAPTER 1.
At the age of fifteen I found myself in St. Louis, Mo., probably five
hundred miles from my childhood home, with one dollar and a half in
money in my pocket. I did not know one person in that whole city, and
no one knew me. After I had wandered about the city a few days, trying
to find something to do to get a living, I chanced to meet what proved
to be the very best that could have happened to me. I met Kit Carson,
the world's most famous frontiersman, the man to whom not half the
credit has been given that was his due.
The time I met him, Kit Carson was preparing to go west on a trading
expedition with the Indians. When I say "going west" I mean far
beyond civilization. He proposed that I join him, and I, in my eagerness
for adventures in the wild, consented readily.
When we left St. Louis, we traveled in a straight western direction, or
as near west as possible. Fifty-eight years ago Missouri was a sparsely
settled country, and we often traveled ten and sometimes fifteen miles
without seeing a house or a single person.
We left Springfield at the south of us and passed out of the State of
Missouri at Fort Scott, and by doing so we left civilization behind, for
from Fort Scott to the Pacific coast was but very little known, and was
inhabited entirely by hostile tribes of Indians.
A great portion of the country between Fort Scott and the Rocky
Mountains that we traveled over on that journey was a wild, barren
waste, and we never imagined it would be inhabited by anything but
wild Indians, Buffalo, and Coyotes.
We traveled up the Neosha river to its source, and I