The wagons, as is the practice at such times, had been run together into an irregular circle, one being placed in the center (as the safest spot), into which the women and children were tumbled, and where, for the time, they were safe from the bullets that were rattling like sleet around them, and striking down their brave defenders upon every hand.
This done, the men devoted themselves to keeping back the swarming devils, that made a perfect realization of pandemonium as they circled about the doomed band.
In what way Dead Man’s Gulch gained its name no one can tell with any certainty, but most probably from the number of massacres and deaths that had taken place within its horrid precincts. It was simply a hollow, somewhat resembling the dried-up bed of a small lake, and, instead of being properly a gulch, was more like a basin, so that to enter it from any direction, one was compelled to descend quite a slope.
The trail which the party were following led directly through the center of this place, it being by far the most feasible route, in spite of the ascent and descent, on account of the broken nature of the country both to the north and south.
Dead Man’s Gulch, occupying an area of several acres, was strewn and covered with bones, as if indeed it were the site of some ancient catacomb, that had been rent in twain by some convulsion of nature.
A slight examination would have shown that these bones were those of horses and human beings, telling in most eloquent language to the beleaguered whites that the fate which threatened them was that which had overtaken many a one before them.
Dead Man’s Gulch indeed was a favorite point of the Comanches, who were always roving the prairies in search of such bands as these, and it was consequently well known and dreaded by all who were compelled to make the journey; and the scene to which we now direct the attention of the reader was, as we have shown, a repetition of what had been enacted there time and again without number.
The first day’s fight was especially destructive upon the horses, it being found almost impossible to shelter them from the aim of the Comanches. As a consequence, the second morning found but few of these indispensable requisites in a journey of this kind. Those that had escaped, however, were secured and sheltered in such a way as to keep them from the other bullets that endeavored to seek them out.
Captain Shields, a sturdy borderer, and a man who had crossed the plains a score of times, suspected from the first that the only possible hope for his company was for some one to get through the Comanche lines to Fort Adams, and that was the reason why he so carefully protected the two or three remaining mustangs from death.
This, as a matter of course, was the last desperate resort, and was only to be attempted when it was absolutely certain that nothing else could avail.