"It war a terrible scene, I can tell you; the Captain he were nigh mad with grief, and the men were boiling over with rage. If they could have got at the Dacotas then they would have fought if there had been twenty to one against them. Dick war nowhere to be seen; the man said that he had caught a fresh horse, which had broken its rope and stampeded through the gate while the massacre was going on, and that he had ridden away on it on the Indian trail.
"If the horses had been fresh the Captain would have started in pursuit at once, and every man was burning to go. But it was lucky as they couldn't, for if they had I have no doubt the whole lot would have been wiped out by the Dacotas. However, there was no possibility of moving for at least a couple of days, for the horses war altogether used up after the march. So they had time to get cool on it.
"That afternoon the Captain, who was in council with the two officers who remained, sent for Rube and me, and asked us our opinion as to what was best to be done. We says at once that there weren't nothing. 'You have lost nigh a third of your force,' says I, 'and have got little over forty left. If we were to go up into the Dacota country we should get ambushed to a certainty, and should have a thousand of them, perhaps two thousand, down on us, and the odds would be too great, Captain; it couldn't be done. Besides, even if you licked them—and I tell you as your chance of doing so would be mighty small—they would disperse in all directions, and then meet and fight you agin, and ye wouldn't be no nearer getting your daughter than you war before.
"'If you ask my advice, it would be that you should send back to the nearest fort for more men, and that you should at once get up the stockade where it has been burnt down, for there is no saying when you will be attacked again. I tell you, Captain, that to lead this party here into the Dacota country would mean sartin death for them.'
"Mad as the Captain was to go in search of his daughter, he saw that I was right, and indeed I concluded he had made up his mind he could do nothing before he sent for us, only he hoped, I suppose, as we might give some sort of hope. 'I am afraid what you say is true,' says he. 'At any rate we must wait till Dick, the scout, returns; he will tell us which way they have gone, and what is their strength.'
"By nightfall the soldiers had buried all the dead just outside the stockade, and had built a temporary wall—for there wasn't a stick of timber within miles—across the gaps in the fence.
"At nightfall Rube and me, whose horses war fresh, started for the nearest fort, and four days afterwards got back with forty more horse-soldiers. We found that Dick had not come back, and we made up our minds as he had gone under. When we were away we had heard that the redskins had attacked the settlements in a dozen different places, and that there was no doubt a general Injin war had broken out. The officer at the fort where I went to was a major; it was a bigger place than Fort Charles, which was a sort of outlying post. I had, in course, told him about the Captain's daughter being carried off.
"He sent up a letter with the soldiers to the Captain, saying how sorry he was to hear of his loss, and he sent up forty men; but he ordered that unless Captain White had received some intelligence which would, in his opinion, justify his undertaking an expedition into the Indian country with so small a force as he could command, he was at once to evacuate the place and fall back with his force on the settlement, as the position was quite untenable, and every man was needed for the defence of the settlers.
"When the Captain got the order he walked up and down by hisself for four or five minutes. Yer see it war a hard choice for him; as a father he was longing to go in search of his child, as a soldier he saw that he should be risking the whole force under his command if he did so, and that at a time when every man was needed at the settlements. At last the order was given that the troops should take the back-track to the settlements on the following evening.
"The Captain told the officers that he should wait till then to give the horses of the men who had arrived with us time to rest; but I know in his heart he wanted to wait in the hope of Dick arriving with news.