After a while one of the Indians came up and asked me if I had any tobacco. I gave him all I had. That made things look a little better. They had a smoke and then Old Tabby came to talk with me.
The Indians, he said, wanted to kill me, but he would not agree to it. My father, he said, was his good friend. But I must turn back and never carry the mail there again; for if they caught me they would surely kill me next time.
“But this mail’s got to go through,” I said. “Let me take it this time and I will not ride here again.”
When I had made this promise, they let me go. I did not carry the mail over there any more; but I was sent further west, about three hundred miles, to ride from Carson Sink to Fort Churchill. The distance was about seventy-five miles and was a very hard ride, for the horses as well as for me, because much of the trail led through deep sand. Some things were not so bad, however; I had no mountains to cross, and the Indians were more friendly here.
East of my beat along Egan Canyon, Shell Creek, and Deep Creek, they had begun to be very ugly, threatening to burn the stations and kill the people, and the following spring they did break out in dead earnest. Some of the stations were burned and one of the riders was killed. That spring I was changed back into Major Egan’s division and rode from Shell Creek to Ruby Valley.
Things grew worse that summer. More stations were burned, some hostlers and riders were killed, and I got very badly wounded. It happened this way. I had been taking some horses to Antelope Station, and on my way back, I made a stop at Spring Valley Station. When I got there, the two boys that looked after the station were out on the wood pile playing cards. They asked me to stay and have dinner. I got my horse and started him towards the station, but instead of going into the stable he went behind it where some other horses were grazing.
Pretty soon we saw the horses going across the meadow towards the cedars with two Indians behind them. We started after them full tilt and gained on them a little. As we ran I fired three shots at them from my revolver, but they were too far off for me to hit them. They reached the cedars a little before we did.
I was ahead of the other two boys, and as I ran around a large cedar one of the Indians shot me in the head with a flint-tipped arrow. It struck me about two inches above the left eye. The two boys were on the other side of the tree. Seeing the Indians run, they came around to find me lying on the ground with the arrow sticking in my head. They tried to pull the arrow out, but the shaft came away and left the flint in my head. Thinking that I would surely die, they rolled me under a tree and started for the next station as fast as they could go. There they got a few men and came back the next morning to bury me; but when they got to me and found that I was still alive, they thought they would not bury me just then.
They carried me to a station called Cedar Wells, and sent to Ruby Valley for a doctor. When he came, he took the spike out of my head and told the boys to keep a wet rag on the wound, as that was all they could do for me.
I lay there for six days, when Major Egan happened to come along. Seeing that I was still alive, he sent for the doctor again. When the doctor came and saw I was no worse, he began to do something for me. But I knew nothing of all this. For eighteen days I lay unconscious. Then I began to get better fast, and it was not long before I was riding again.