One winter he and those who were with him built a skin house from the hides of game, and when their ammunition gave out they left three of their number and all of their dogs at the skin house and went to the settlements for powder and lead.

When they returned they found that two of the men had been killed and the other chased away by the Indians, who, however, had not found the camp.

The dogs, having seen no human face for three months, were very wild, yet in a few days became as tame and well trained as ever.

They killed such enormous quantities of buffalo, elk, and especially deer, that they could not pack the hides into camp, and one of the party, during an idle moment and in a spirit of protest against fate,[24] carved on the peeled trunk of a fallen poplar, where it long remained, the sentence: "2300 deer skins lost; ruination by God!" The soul of this thrifty hunter must have been further grieved when a party of Cherokees visited their camp and took away all the camp utensils and five hundred hides.

The whites found the broad track they made in coming in, but could not find where they had gone out, each wily redskin then covering his own trail, and the whole number apparently breaking up into several parties.
Sometimes the Indians not only plundered the hunting camps but killed the hunters as well, and the hunters retaliated in kind.