He Said "How"
With A Fiendish Grin That Showed How Thoroughly He Was Enjoying Our
Frightened Faces, And Then Turned His Fast Little Beast Back To The
Sunflower Road.
Of course, as long as the road to the post was clear
we were in no very great danger,
As our ponies were fast, but if that
savage could have passed us and gotten us in between him and the
Apache village, we would have lost our horses, if not our lives, for
turning off through the sunflowers would have been an impossibility.
The very next morning, I think it was, one of the government mules
wandered away, and two of the drivers went in search of it, but not
finding it in the post, one of the men suggested that they should go
to the river where the post animals are watered. It is a fork of the
Canadian River, and is just over a little sand hill, not one quarter
of a mile back of the quarters, but not in the direction of the
sunflower road. The other man, however, said he would not go - that it
was not safe - and came back to the corral, so the one who proposed
going went on alone.
Time passed and the man did not return, and finally a detail was sent
out to look him up. They went directly to the river, and there they
found him, just on the other side of the hill - dead. He had been shot
by some fiendish Indian soon after leaving his companion. The mule has
never been found, and is probably in a far-away Indian village, where
he brays in vain for the big rations of corn he used to get at the
government corral.
Last Monday, soon after luncheon, forty or fifty Indians came rushing
down the drive in front of the officers' quarters, frightening some of
us almost out of our senses. Where they came from no one could tell,
for not one sentry had seen them until they were near the post. They
rode past the houses like mad creatures, and on out to the company
gardens, where they made their ponies trample and destroy every
growing thing. Only a few vegetables will mature in this soil and
climate, but melons are often very good, and this season the gardeners
had taken much pains with a crop of fine watermelons that were just
beginning to ripen. But not one of these was spared - every one was
broken and crushed by the little hoofs of the ponies, which seem to
enjoy viciousness of this kind as much as the Indians themselves.
A company of infantry was sent at once to the gardens, but as it was
not quite possible for the men to outrun the ponies, the mischief had
been done before they got there, and all they could do was to force
them back at the point of the bayonet. Cavalry was ordered out, also,
to drive them away, but none of the troops were allowed to fire upon
them, and that the Indians knew very well.
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