The shooting was kept up until after the man was dead, many of the bullets hitting the side of the hotel. It was simply maddening to have to stay in that room and be compelled to listen to the moans and death gurgle of that murdered man, and hear him cry, "Oh, my lassie, my poor lassie!" as he did over and over again, until he could no longer speak. It seemed as though every time he tried to say one word, there was the report of a pistol. After he was really dead we could hear the fiends running off, and then other people came and carried the body away.
The shooting altogether did not last longer than five or ten minutes, and at almost the first shot we could hear calls all over the wretched little town of "Vigilante! Vigilante!" and knew that the vigilantes were gathering, but before they could get together the murderous work had been finished. All the time there had been perfect silence throughout the hotel. The proprietor told us that he got up, but that it would have been certain death if he or anyone else had opened a door.
Hal was on the floor in a corner of our room, and began to growl after the very first scream, and I was terrified all the time for fear he would go to the open window and attract the attention of those murderers below, who would undoubtedly have commenced firing at the window and perhaps have killed all of us. But the moans of the dying man frightened the dog awfully, and he crawled under the bed, where he stayed during the rest of the horrible night. The cause of all the trouble seems to have been that a colored man undertook to carry in his wagon three or four men from Dodge City to Fort Dodge, a distance of five miles, but when he got out on the road a short distance he came to the conclusion, from their talk, that they were going to the post for evil purposes, and telling them that he would take them no farther, he turned his team around to come back home. On the way back the men must have threatened him, for when he got in town he drove to the house of some colored people who live on a corner across from the hotel and implored them to let him in, but they were afraid and refused to open the door, for by that time the men were shooting at him.
The poor man ran across the street, leaving a trail of blood that streamed from his wounds, and was brutally killed under our window. Early the next morning, when we crossed the street to go to the cars, the darky's mule was lying on the ground, dead, near the corner of the hotel, and stuck on one long ear was the murdered man's hat. Soon after we reached Granada a telegram was received giving an account of the affair, and saying also that in less than one half hour after the train had passed through, Dodge City was surrounded by troops of United States cavalry from Fort Dodge, that the entire town was searched for the murderers, but that not even a trace of one had been discovered.
When I got inside a car the morning after that awful, awful night, it was with a feeling that I was leaving behind me all such things and that by evening I would be back once more at our old army home and away from hostile Indians, and hostile desperadoes too. But when I saw that servant girl with the pale, emaciated face and flushed cheeks, so ill she could barely sit up, my heart went down like lead and Indians seemed small trials in comparison to what I saw ahead of me.
Well, she will go in a few days, and then I can give the house some attention. The new furniture and china are all here, but nothing has been done in the way of getting settled. The whole coming back has been cruelly disappointing, and I am so tired and nervous I am afraid of my own shadow. So after a while I think I will go East for a few weeks, which I know you will be glad to hear.
FORT LYON, COLORADO TERRITORY, August, 1873.
WE have just come in from a drive to the Purgatoire with Colonel Knight behind his handsome horses. It makes me sad, always, to go over that familiar road and to scenes that are so closely associated with my learning to ride and shoot when we were here before. The small tree that was my target is dead but still standing, and on it are several little pieces of the white paper bull's eyes that Faye and Lieutenant Baldwin tacked on it for me.
We often see poor Tom. The post trader bought him after Lieutenant Baldwin's death, so the dear horse would always have good care and not be made to bring and carry for a cruel master. He wanders about as he chooses and is fat, but the coat that was once so silky and glossy is now dull and faded, and the horse looks spiritless and dejected. Poor Tom! The greyhound, Magic, still remembers their many, many hunts together when the horse would try to outrun the dog, and the hound often goes out to make him little visits, and the sight is pathetic. That big dog of the chaplain's is still here, and how the good man can conscientiously have him about, I cannot understand.
Colonel Knight has two large dogs also, but they are shut in the stable most of the time to guard his pair of valuable horses. The horses are not particularly fast or spirited, but they are very beautiful and perfectly matched in color and gait.