half an hour trying to count them, and concluded, with much guessing,
that there must be at least a couple of hundred. Also, we saw white men
with them and doing a great deal of talking.

North-east of our train, not more than four hundred yards from it, we
discovered a large camp of whites behind a low rise of ground. And
beyond we could see fifty or sixty saddle-horses grazing. And a mile or
so away, to the north, we saw a tiny cloud of dust approaching. Jed and
I waited until we saw a single man, riding fast, gallop into the camp of
the whites.

When we got back into the corral the first thing that happened to me was
a smack from mother for having stayed away so long; but father praised
Jed and me when we gave our report.

"Watch for an attack now maybe, Captain," Aaron Cochrane said to father.
"That man the boys seen has rid in for a purpose. The whites are holding
the Indians till they get orders from higher up. Maybe that man brung
the orders one way or the other. They ain't sparing horseflesh, that's
one thing sure."

Half an hour after our return Laban attempted a scout under a white flag.
But he had not gone twenty feet outside the circle when the Indians
opened fire on him and sent him back on the run.

Just before sundown I was in the rifle pit holding the baby, while mother
was spreading the blankets for a bed. There were so many of us that we
were packed and jammed. So little room was there that many of the women
the night before had sat up and slept with their heads bowed on their
knees. Right alongside of me, so near that when he tossed his arms about
he struck me on the shoulder, Silas Dunlap was dying. He had been shot
in the head in the first attack, and all the second day was out of his
head and raving and singing doggerel. One of his songs, that he sang
over and over, until it made mother frantic nervous, was:

"Said the first little devil to the second little devil,
'Give me some tobaccy from your old tobaccy box.'
Said the second little devil to the first little devil,
'Stick close to your money and close to your rocks,
An' you'll always have tobaccy in your old tobaccy box.'"

I was sitting directly alongside of him, holding the baby, when the
attack burst on us. It was sundown, and I was staring with all my eyes
at Silas Dunlap who was just in the final act of dying. His wife, Sarah,
had one hand resting on his forehead. Both she and her Aunt Martha were
cryi