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Updated: May 10, 2025
I followed very closely for I was mortally afraid to get fifteen feet away from Uncle Kit, in that sort of company. Black Buffalo did us the honor, that evening, to take us to his own private wick-i-up for supper. It was a custom with this, and many other tribes of Indians, that conveyed great distinction to visitors, to kill and cook for them a nice fat dog.
We were met on the outskirts of the village by White Horse, Chief of the Comanches, who, being an intimate friend of Uncle Kit, shook hands with us and conducted us to his own wick-i-up. There we unpacked the animals and piled up our goods, and White Horse detailed an Indian to guard the packs day and night.
The late June dusk found them still threading the endless aisles of pine, their sense of direction completely obscured by the sinking of the sun. "Scared, Lyd?" inquired Kent as they paused for a moment's rest on a log. "No, but I'm awful hungry and I've chewed gum till I'll scream if I see another piece. We ought to come on another wick-i-up soon." "We've come on a dozen of them," grumbled Kent.
They visited one or two neat Indian farms, but for the most part Charlie led her from one wick-i-up to the other, deep set in recesses of the wood, where the only whites to intrude on the Indians were the occasional government wood cruisers. These wick-i-ups were hovels, usually in the last stages of poverty and desolation.
So here we bade the emigrants good-bye, they keeping the Sante Fe trail east, while we turned due south, and in company with the thirty Kiowas, rode that evening to their own village. Chief Blackbird met us at the outer edge of the village and invited us to his wick-i-up. We told him that we had come to trade with his people, and that in four days we would be ready for business.
It was well toward dusk when Job dropped exhausted on the trail, and the hardy Indian slung him over his shoulder, bore him up a narrow cañon that entered the main gorge on the right, and laid him down on his own blankets in the little wick-i-up made of twisted limbs and twigs that he called home. Soon the crackling fire warmed the water, the sprained foot was bandaged, and Job was asleep.
We crossed the Arkansas river above Bent's Fort, and from here we traveled along the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, striking the Platte at the mouth of Cherry creek, which is now the center of Denver City, Colo. Here we met Mountain Phil of whom you will hear more in this narrative. He was living in a wick-i-up and had a squaw for a wife.
"If I were a white man," said Charlie, "I'd make you love me and marry me. But I'm an Indian and sooner or later I'll go back to my people. I'm just making believe I can play the white man's game for a while." He eyed Lydia wistfully. "But we'll be friends, eh, Lydia? Always? Even if I go back to the wick-i-up, you'll be my friend?"
That evening after eating my supper! went over to White Bird's wick-i-up and found him sitting there, bloody from head to foot, with a huge cut on one cheek, another on one side of the head, and numerous other wounds, making him the most horrible specimen of humanity that I had ever seen living.
"Not if I have to live in a wick-i-up three feet square, and wear your cast-off blankets," she answered, with some spirit. "I'm just about the right color for a squaw, though; that is, if I look as badly as the rest of you do." "Thank you, dear," returned Howard laughing. "You're at least ten shades blacker than anybody else; and Charlie is so dark that his patch hasn't showed any for five days."
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