The trail of the retreating volunteers was strewn with dead bodies, saddles, guns, knives, pistols, and blankets, thrown away when the chase became desperate, and every man was trying to save his own life. Of the 105 men who went into the fight 76 were killed and a few wounded, slightly, who managed to escape.
Among the killed was Major Ormsby, the commander of the expedition, an old resident in the country; and Henry Meredith, a young lawyer from Nevada City, California, a man well-known and highly esteemed on the Pacific Coast. At the first volley fired by the Indians, in the cañon into which the command had been entrapped, Meredith was wounded and fell from his horse, but rose on one knee and fired three shots from his revolver as the foe advanced upon him.
When the survivors of this slaughter reached Virginia City and told the news of the defeat, the excitement was intense. In all the towns it began to be feared that the Indians, elated by their victory, would come in and sweep everything before them. It was said that there were 500 warriors in the fight at Pyramid Lake and it was supposed that the Piutes could muster 5,000 men. Dispatches were sent to California for regular troops, and as the news spread men volunteered and companies were formed in Sacramento, Nevada City and Downieville, California. Men also volunteered again in the several Washoe towns, and soon an army of several hundred men, regulars and volunteers, was in the field for the effectual putting down of the savages.
CHAPTER XV.
TROUBLE WITH THE INDIANS.
Meantime there was a grand panic in the several towns along the Comstock range. Many men, women, and children at once left for California. The night after the survivors of the fight at Pyramid Lake came in, it was reported in Virginia City and Gold Hill that the Indians were advancing in full force and were but twenty miles away. This news caused a grand stampede, many men suddenly remembering that they had business on the other side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
At Virginia City, during this season of alarms, the women and children who remained were corraled for safety in a large stone hotel, that was being built by Peter O’Riley, and the walls of which were up to such a height that it made a pretty fair sort of a fort.
There were frequent night alarms and at times it was reported that the Indians were on their way up Six-mile Cañon to attack the town. There were but two classes of persons in the place, those who were not at all frightened, and those who were frightened almost out of their wits.
One night when there was an alarm at Virginia, a Dutchman got his partner to let him down into a shaft, about fifty feet in depth, thinking that about the safest place that could be found in case of an Indian raid.
After the Dutchman had been deposited at the bottom of the shaft his partner went down into the town. He had been there but a short time before a lot of horses and mules were stampeded somewhere down the cañon and came charging up toward the town with great clatter. All thought the Indians were surely coming this time, and not a few went out of the town by the back trails and struck out for California.