The Sioux Indians were then on the warpath. We had been warned to keep an eye on our horses, but we thought little about it till one day we were nooning on the Big Sandy—about where Lot Smith burnt the government wagon trains—when, just as we sat down to eat, “Webb” looked up to see our horses, which we had turned loose to graze, disappearing in a cloud of dust. Two Indians were behind them, both on an old horse of mine, and they were whooping the others across the hills to beat time.
Jumping to our feet we dashed after them afoot. This was useless, of course. “Webb” and Donaldson jerked out their revolvers and took several shots at the rascals, but they were out of revolver reach and getting farther away every second, while we stared and damned them.
It was a pretty pickle we were in—forty miles from nowhere, with three wagons loaded with perishable stuff, and not a horse to move them. We got madder and madder as we watched the thieving devils gradually slip out of sight beyond the sand hills.
Then we went back to our wagons—cussing and discussing the situation. For an hour or more we tried to puzzle a way out of our difficulty. It was no use. The more we worried the worse it looked. All the money I had was invested in those eggs and butter and they would soon be worse than nothing in the hot sun. The other boys were in as bad a fix as I was. We just couldn’t see a way out of it; but we kept up our puzzling till suddenly we heard a rumbling noise.
A few minutes later a covered wagon drawn by a pair of mules came in sight.
An old man—“Boss Tweed” the boys had nicknamed him—was the driver. In the seat with him was a boy, who had a saddle horse tied behind. They were surely a welcome sight to us.
We told them of our trouble. The old man reckoned he could help us out. He proposed that we load the supplies of two of our wagons on his larger wagon, then trailing our other wagon behind, his old mules he thought could haul us into South Pass. It looked like our only chance, but “Webb” thought he had a better plan.
The Indians, he said, must make their way out of the country through a certain pass. There was no other route they could escape by. If we three would take the mules and boy’s horse and ride hard through the night, we might get ahead of the thieves and retake our horses.
“Anything for the best,” said the old man; but the boy objected. We shouldn’t take his horse. He started to untie his animal, but we stopped him. Our situation was a desperate one; he had to give in.
We unhitched the mules, and strapped quilts on their backs. Donaldson and I jumped on them; “Webb” took the horse. Then we struck the trail single file, my old mule on lead with Jim to whip him up and “Webb” behind him to whip Jim’s mule. It was a funny sight. I never meet Jim but he calls up that circus parade loping along over the hills out on the Big Sandy.