in the next few minutes I could never describe. The
women knew me at once and with cries and laughter, touching, beyond
description greeted me.

In an instant I was off my horse and cutting them loose from the tree,
at the same time the men were circling around us with guns cocked ready
to shoot the first squaw that interfered with us.

To my great surprise I did not see a bow or arrow among them or a
tomahawk either; as quick as I had the women loose I helped them up
behind the men I had selected to take them away from captivity back to
meet the train. As soon as we had left them of all the noise I ever
heard those squaws made the worst. I think they did this so the bucks
might know that they had lost their captives and might come to their
assistance. Where the bucks were I never knew. After riding four or five
miles we slacked our speed, and the women began telling us how the whole
thing had occurred. It seemed they had got to the camping ground early
in the afternoon of the second day after leaving us and instead of
staking out their horses they turned them loose, and about dusk the old
man and his son went out to look for the horses, were gone a couple of
hours and came back without them. This made them all very uneasy. The
next morning just at break of day the old man and his son took their
guns and started out again to hunt for their horses, and the mother and
daughter made a fire and cooked breakfast. The sun was about an hour
high, and they were sitting near the fire waiting for the men to come
back when they heard the report of a gun; they thought the men were
coming back and were shooting some game. They had no idea there was an
Indian near them. In the course of a half an hour they heard the second
shot, and in a few minutes the Indians were upon them, and they knew
that the men were both dead, because the Indians had both of their guns
and were holding them up and yelling and dancing with fiendish glee. The
Indians grabbed them and tied their hands behind them and then they tore
down their tent, took the wagon cover off and everything out of the
wagon that they could carry off.

"The bucks did the things up in bundles, and the squaws packed them on
their backs, and they were expecting every minute to be killed. After
the squaws had gone the bucks ate everything they could find that was
cooked, and the squaws that you found us with made us go with them to
the north end of the lake and there they camped tha