I was in a terrible state of suspense when I had despatched the letter, but, fortunately, the Professor responded promptly, and when I opened the envelope, a draft for three hundred dollars fell at my feet. The note which accompanied it said: “I like the style of your letter. Enclose draft. Go to work,” or words to the same effect.
That letter bound me to Cope for four long years, and enabled me to endure immeasurable hardships and privations in the barren fossil fields of the West; and it has always been one of the joys of my life to have known intimately in field and shop the greatest naturalist America has produced.
As soon as the frost was out of the ground, having secured a team of ponies and a boy to drive them, I left Manhattan and drove out to Buffalo Park, where one of my brothers was the agent. The only house, beside the small station building, was that occupied by the section men. Great piles of buffalo bones along the railroad at every station testified to the countless numbers of the animals slain by the white man in his craze for pleasure and money. A buffalo hide was worth at that time about a dollar and a quarter.
Here at Buffalo I had my headquarters for many years. A great windmill and a well of pure water, a hundred and twenty feet deep, made it a Mecca for us fossil hunters after two weeks of strong alkali water. At this well Professor Mudge’s party and my own used to meet in peace after our fierce rivalry in the field as collectors for our respective paleontologists, Marsh and Cope.
What vivid memories I have of that first expedition!—memories of countless hardships and splendid results. I explored all the exposures of chalk from the mouth of Hackberry Creek, in the eastern part of Gove County, to Fort Wallace, on the south fork of the Smoky Hill, a distance of a hundred miles, as well as the region along the north and south forks of the Soloman River.
When we left Buffalo Station, we left civilization behind us. We made our own wagon trails, two of which especially were afterwards used by the settlers until the section lines were constructed. One of them ran directly south, crossing Hackberry Creek about fifteen miles from the railroad, at a point where there was a spring of pure water—a rare and valuable find in that region. We camped here many times, and made such a good trail that it was used for years. Our second trail extended across the country, striking Hackberry Creek where Gove City now stands, and led over Plum Creek Divide, whose high ledges of yellow chalk served us as a landmark for twenty miles. From this point we could see Monument Rocks, and near them the remains of an old one-company post on the Santa Fé Trail. Our trail then led up the Smoky Hill to the mouth of Beaver Creek, on the eastern edge of Logan County, and followed the old road as far west as Wallace.