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else come with Trent out there to Fort Hayes? No mention of it in his wife’s letters, but did the congressman’s son have a search party? As far as Slocum knew, no one had shown up to claim Hampton’s body and handle the funeral. He understood that the funeral man had sent a bill to Miles’s father in D.C. for his burial costs.
    A highly placed congressman like that could sic the U.S. marshals or Pinkerton men on Slocum, to find and arrest him on murder charges. One more damn good reason for him to keep his head down. He’d better back get to killing buffalo. It soon would be too cold and wintry to do much. He also needed to go see about trading some of the newly arrived whiskey for hides.
    There were usually some squaws who would come to trade for food when they learned of any camps around close. Though there’d been none so far, one day they’d show up. Slocum could trade for some wolf pelts in full winter fur that would sell well. Also mink and ermine furs, along with the fierce badger skins. It all depended how many tribes were this far west. He knew many tribesmen were down on the Canadian River because winters were a little milder down there and that meant more buffalo, but the area bordered on the Comanche range, and they were too deadly for Slocum to risk being around.
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    Hunting went well until the first big snow drifted in. Then they fed their animals grain sparingly until they could paw for grass under the snow cover. It was weeks before they could go back for more treasure hunting. From a wandering trader, Slocum bought a pack mule to carry the loot back home.
    But before the snow really set in, Murty had covered lots of the riverbed ground with a peach branch, to find only old flint musket works and barrels, the stocks long rotted away, spurs, and some steel spear heads—but no more boxes in that area.
    Five Indian women came to trade furs for food at their camp one afternoon. Slocum issued them one bottle of whiskey and told them in sign language that they would owe him three buffalo hides for it. They nodded.
    Two days later they came back with six horses and their travois loaded down with buffalo hides and furs to trade for more food and whiskey. At that price Stowe would show a real good profit from his winter work. Diego was off with his three men cutting down trees on an island, for firewood. With the hard freeze on the river, they hoped to get the wood out and back to camp, where the supply was getting low. They each carried a rifle, and Slocum had told them to be alert at all times.
    They returned that evening and told him that they had a good stockpile cut up and thought the ice was thick enough to hold up horses and a wagonload of firewood to bring it closer to camp. The ice was eight inches thick where they drew water for the animals and themselves from the river.
    Hunting was slowed down by the weather, but more squaws, from different tribes, came to trade for—“with-ski.”
That was how they pronounced it. One squaw, he knew, had gone away and then slipped back at night to treat some of Slocum’s men on her back under the covers for something in trade, maybe for some blankets. There was no trouble; Slocum was amused that life went on as usual even out on the frozen prairie, miles from civilization. He had the lovely Murty to giggle with him in his bedroll at night anyway.
    Then a thaw came in February. In the South, where he was raised, they called it oat planting time. He and Murty went back and tried a new place to search for more treasure. They recovered two more treasure chests that day and secured the coins in her wagon. Then he hauled off the empty chests and destroyed them so no one would recognize them.
    So far he felt their treasure recovery was going well. There was no telling the value their find amounted to, but the haul was much larger than he’d ever imagined. More squaws came to trade, but he could see that their