CHAPTER VII.
ACCIDENTS AND ESCAPES.
My restless, roaming spirit would not allow me to remain at home very long, and in November, after the recovery of my mother, I went up the Republican River and its tributaries on a trapping expedition in company with Dave Harrington.

Our outfit consisted of one wagon and a yoke of oxen for the transportation of provisions, traps, and other necessaries.
We began trapping near Junction City, Kansas, and then proceeded up the Republican River to the mouth of Prairie Dog Creek, where we found plenty of beavers.
Having seen no signs of Indians thus far, we felt comparatively safe.

We were catching a large number of beavers and were prospering finely, when one of our oxen, having become rather poor, slipped and fell upon the ice, dislocating his hip, so that we had to shoot him to end his misery.
This left us without a team; but we cared little for that, however, as we had made up our minds to remain there till spring, when, and it was decided, that one of us should go to the nearest settlement and get a yoke of oxen with which to haul our wagon into some place of safety where we could leave it.
We would probably have pulled through the winter all right had it not been for a very serious accident which befell me just at that time.
Spying a herd of elk, we started in pursuit of them, and creeping up towards them as slyly as possible, while going around the bend of a sharp bluff or bank of the creek I slipped and broke my leg just above the ankle.

Notwithstanding the great pain I was suffering, Harrington could not help laughing when I urged him to shoot me, as he had the ox, and thus end my misery.

He told me to "brace up," and that he would bring me out "all right." "I am not much of a surgeon," said he, "but I can fix that leg of yours, even if I haven't got a diploma." He succeeded in getting me back to camp, which was only a few yards from the creek, and then he set the fracture as well as he knew how, and made me as comfortable as was possible under the circumstances.