Along towards morning, just as it was getting daylight, they came and woke me up. There was a lot of shooting going on outside, and they wanted to know what it meant. I listened, and the first thing I heard was somebody saying, “Go to the house and see if the boy is all right.” I looked through the hole and saw a lot of soldiers. Some of Johnston’s army had been sent out to clear the trail of the murdering Indians.
Another exciting experience happened to me when Mr. Kennedy, a horse trader, was bringing a large band of mustangs along the trail from California to Salt Lake to sell. He got belated out on the desert and found it necessary to stop at Deep Creek, where he could winter his horses out instead of feeding them. The Indians were so bad that we had to send out guards with the horses in the daytime, and at night corral them, and place a strong guard around them.
Our corral was made by digging a trench and setting in large cedar posts on end. There was a straw stack in the middle of the corral where the boys tried to sleep; but the Indians got so mean that they would shoot arrows in the bed. This made it too dangerous to sleep there. Sometimes we would spread our blankets on the straw as if we were in bed, and in the morning find several arrows sticking through them.
A favorite way of guarding the corral was to take up a big picket, or post on either side of the bars, and have a man stand in its place.
The Indians’ scheme was to get the bars down in some way, then stampede the horses, and run them off. One night Peter Neece and I were standing guard in this way. He was on one side of the bars and I was on the other. We knew that there were Indians around by the way the horses in the corral acted. I was standing on the south side of the bars looking off into the sagebrush, for I believed the Indians would be coming from that direction, because the horses were looking that way.
But one Indian, instead of coming straight up from the front, got close up to the fence at the back and came creeping around close to the corral to get to the bars. It happened that he was coming on my side, but I did not see him. Neece did, but he could not warn me without giving himself away.
He watched him crawling towards the bars, and just as he got about to his feet, Neece fired. The Indian gave one unearthly yell that could have been heard for miles, sprang in the air and settled down where I had been standing, but I wasn’t there. When that yell was being let out, I turned a back somersault and landed a rod or more inside of the corral.
Sometimes at night when the horses were brought in, we would saddle one for each of us and keep him saddled ready for use all night. In the morning we would put the saddle on fresh horses to be prepared at any minute to strike out after the Indians if it was necessary.
In the spring, when Mr. Kennedy was about to start with his horses for Salt Lake, the herder was fired on one morning as he was driving the band out to grass. The Indians then closed in behind the horses and headed them towards the hills. Seven of us immediately started after them. I was on a lazy, old blue horse, and could not keep up with the other boys, but Mr. Kennedy rode a very good horse. He was way ahead of the rest of us and was crowding the Indians pretty close. He would have overtaken them in a few minutes more. Just before he caught up with them, however, one Indian’s horse fell, carrying his rider down with him. As Kennedy charged on the Indian to run over him, he received an arrow in the arm; but the Indian got a bullet through the head in return. Kennedy had to wait until we came up to pull the arrow out of his arm.
By that time the Indians had the horses in a box canyon. A few of the thieves hid among the rocks and held us back while the rest of the band rushed the horses up the canyon. The canyon led south a few hundred yards, then turned sharply around a large, steep mountain and ran almost directly north. A short distance further the canyon turned again and opened into a large meadow about a mile long.