The next morning I started alone on my pony to follow the trail to the Cove, where Jake, unconscious of danger, was at work in the fossil beds. It seemed an interminable journey, and I thought that there was an ambuscade behind every bush and pile of rocks that guarded the road. But, greatly relieved, I got out of sight at last in the deep canyons on the other side, and soon saw Jake’s pony near a fossil bed and found Jake himself deeply interested in a splendid discovery he had made.
When I told him the news, he wanted to drop everything until the war was over, and fly for safety to the stockade. But no; my tent, with many fine fossils in it, was in an open valley in plain sight for miles, and would quickly attract any marauding hostile, who might set fire to it and destroy the work of months. I insisted, therefore, upon caching, the Pacific coast term for hiding, everything. So we took down the tent, and putting it, with the fossils and all the rest of the outfit, into a secret place, we covered them with a big brush pile. Then I was ready to fly as fast as our ponies could carry us.
When we reached the river, Bill was still with Mr. Mascall, and brought over the boat. Then both men insisted that we go without further delay to the Gulch, as we had risked our lives long enough. But there was a large collection of valuable fossils in the log house behind Mr. Mascall’s cabin, and as the specimens were wrapped in burlap, they would be destroyed if the Indians burned down the house, which they would be sure to do if they came. I had no boxes, but I had a quantity of new lumber, which we had secured from a mill in the vicinity; so, refusing to be moved, I took off my coat and went to work sawing up the lumber and making boxes. The other men never let their guns leave their hands, and kept guard all night, expecting every moment to hear the whoop of the Indians.
By daylight I had every fossil neatly packed, each in a little box, and then we all took hold, and carrying the boxes down to the first river bottom, hid them under a great grapevine, which completely covered them. After throwing dead leaves over our trail, I was satisfied that we had done all that we could, and as we could not induce Mascall to abandon his property, we left him and went over to the Gulch. We found nearly all the settlers keeping house inside the stockade, which was built of pine logs and covered enough ground to hold their teams, wagons, and cattle, as well as themselves.
As I realized that it would be impossible for us to do any work in the John Day beds, fearing every moment to be surprised by Indians, I concluded that this would be a good time to go to the Dalles and try to find out what had become of the collection of Fossil Lake material which had been sent off the year before, and had been lost somewhere. I had a receipt for the specimens from a Mr. French, who was, I supposed, the agent for the Oregon Steam Navigation Company. His letterhead read “Forwarding Agent for the O. S. N. Co.,” but I had repeatedly written to the agent at the Dalles, and had received no answer, while Cope, from his end of the line at Philadelphia, had sent tracers out over every route he could think of, trying to locate the fossils.
A Mr. Wood, the owner of a large herd of horses, was driving the herd to a point near the Dalles for protection from the Indians, and I joined his party. But the several hundred horses raised such a volume of dust that, after a few days of suffocation, I concluded that I might as well lose my scalp as be choked to death, and leaving the herd, went on alone. All along the way, men, women, and children were fleeing for safety to the Dalles, and dozens of homes and ranches were being deserted just at the time when the people should have been saving their grain. I never in my life saw so much excitement and fear. As many white men were fleeing for their lives as there were Indians on the warpath, and every man of them was blaming General Howard for not having exterminated the hostiles before they started.
I met the man who had hauled my Fossil Lake collection in to the Dalles, and for the first time learned the truth about them. It seems that they had never been shipped. Mr. French simply had a warehouse, and forwarded goods by the Steam Navigation Company, and mine had been covered up in the warehouse and entirely forgotten. I was in splendid spirits when I knew that they were safe.
Having rescued this valuable material from the warehouse, I returned to the Gulch without seeing an Indian, to find the people still in a state of great excitement. General Howard had sent word that the men could put themselves under the leadership of Colonel Bernard, each citizen furnishing his own mount and arms, but receiving his rations from the Government. I tried to raise a company of men to accept this offer, but not a man cared to go. At last, heartily tired of staying in camp, I asked for a volunteer to go with me to the John Day valley to find out how Mr. Mascall and the old man at the stage station were getting on. No one would go at first, but later Mr. Leander Davis, who was for many years a fossil hunter for Professor Marsh, agreed to go with me; and packing a horse with blankets and supplies, we started.
We were relieved to find both men well, and no sign of Indians. Continuing our journey east, we crossed the south fork of the John Day, and all doubts as to the movements of the Indians were removed. For a wide trail, cut deeply into the dry soil by six thousand horses and the three hundred Indians who were driving them north, led down the slope and followed up the main fork on the Canyon City road.
As we sat on our horses, looking south along the heavy trail, we saw some half-dozen horsemen coming toward us. We knew that they must have seen us, and concluded to stay where we were until we could make them out. Before long we saw the glitter of sabers and the flash of gold buttons, and soon General Howard and his staff rode up at a gallop. I recognized him by his brigadier general straps and by his empty sleeve. He had lost an arm fighting to preserve the Union.