'They have got a grist of scalps,' he said, 'and as much booty as they could carry away. They will be making straight back to their villages to have their dances and feasts. You have a good chance of getting on safely now.'
Captain Hampton volunteered to form part of the first watch. The news had rendered him very uneasy. He told Jacob that he might as well come out with him.
'I am troubled about this affair, Jacob,' he said, when they had taken their place, about a hundred yards away from the waggons. 'You know, I was saying to-day that we might possibly overtake them at any time. If they have travelled at the rate at which the heavy trains move they may very well have been with that party who have been massacred by the Indians. Mind, I do not think that they were; I should say that most likely they have gone on as fast—or possibly even faster—than we have. The waggon they brought was a light one, though it was heavier than ours, but they have six horses. Then, as we have heard, sometimes parties all with light waggons and carriages join and travel together, and so get along much faster than ordinary trains. I think they would have pushed on as fast as they possibly could. I feel sure that if they had a hand in that attack upon me, the man who started by the steamer in the morning would find out before he went on board that I had been taken to the hotel, and that I was alive.
'Probably I may have been reported as much worse than I really was, and they would count upon the wound being a mortal one. Still they could not be sure of it, and would decide to push across the plains as rapidly as possible, in case I should recover and pursue them. Still there is just the possibility that feeling confident that I should die they might take it quietly, and have been in that caravan. It seems to render everything uncertain. Before, we knew they were ahead of us, and that sooner or later we should come upon them in California, if we did not overtake them on the journey; now, we know that possibly they have been killed, and the girl carried off by the Indians.'
'But we shall pass by the place to-morrow, Ned, and you will be able to see if they are there.'
'We shall not be able to see that, Jacob; the vultures and wild dogs make very short work of those who fall out here on the plains. When we get there to-morrow we shall find nothing but cleanly-picked bones.'
This turned out to be the case. The caravan camped four miles short of the scene of the massacre, and made a detour in the morning to avoid it. Captain Hampton rode over early with the hunters, but found, as he expected, that the vultures and dogs had done their work. Two days later the train arrived at Salt Lake City. Here were a great number of waggons and emigrants, for most of those crossing the plains made a halt of some duration here, both to rest their animals and to enjoy a period of quiet, undisturbed by fears of the dreaded Indian war whoop. There was, too, an opportunity for trade with the Mormons, from whom they obtained meat, grain, and vegetables, in exchange for tea, sugar, axes, and materials for clothes.
Captain Hampton remained but a night, spending the evening in examining the newly-raised settlement, and wondering at the strange band of ignorant enthusiasts who had thus cut themselves off from the world and forsaken everything in their blind belief in an impostor as ignorant but more astute than themselves. He made many inquiries as to the possibility of getting together a band to follow up the Indians who were the authors of the massacre four days before, in order to punish them and to rescue the captives they might have carried off, but among the Mormons he found nothing but a dull apathy as to anything outside their own colony, while the emigrants were all too much bent upon pressing forward towards the land of gold, to listen to anything that would cause delay. He had mooted the subject to the men of his own party, but they had shaken their heads.
'I doubt whether it is possible, Ned,' one of them said. 'It 'ud need a mighty strong party to venture into the hills after them Redskins. We don't know what tribe they were or where they came from, and they would be a sight more likely to find us and attack us than we to find them. Their villages may be hundreds of miles away. We ain't sure as they carried any women off, though like enough they have. No, it won't do, Ned. We ought to have at least a hundred good men for such a job as that, and there ain't a chance of your getting them. It ain't like as when a border village is attacked and women carried off; then their friends are ready to go out to pay back the Redskins and rescue the women, and men from other villages are ready to join, because what has happened to one to-day may happen to another to-morrow, and so all are concerned in giving the Indians a lesson. But it ain't no one's business here. This crowd are all concerned only in getting on as hard as they can. There ain't one of them but thinks that the delay of a week might lose him a fortune; and though they would fight if the Redskins were to attack them, they have not got any fight in them except for their lives, and even if they were willing to go they would not be no manner of use on an expedition like that you talk about.'
Captain Hampton hardly regretted the failure of his attempt to get up an expedition at Salt Lake City. It would have entailed a great loss of time, and the chances that the woman he was in search of had been in the caravan were slight indeed. The stream of emigration was so great that frequently five or six caravans a day passed along, and as she might be a day or a month ahead of him it was clear that the odds were great indeed against her being in any given one of them. The risk of attack by Indians was henceforth comparatively slight, and Captain Hampton was therefore able to push on at a much higher rate of speed. He would, indeed, have travelled much faster than he did, had it not been for the necessity of stopping for an hour or two with each caravan he overtook, so as to ascertain that the party he was in search of were not with it.