While absent upon a hunting and trapping expedition, his cabin had been surprised, his wife and only child, a little girl some three years of age, cruelly murdered, and their mutilated remains consumed in the fire that destroyed his home.
A blackened ruin was all that was left of the spot that was so dear to him, and he found himself alone in the world, with only one thought in the future—vengeance upon the murderers.
In the drear solitude of that heart-sickening scene, and beside the ashes of all that he had treasured in the world, he breathed that vow of vengeance, which the lips of so many bereaved settlers in the Far West have sent up to heaven—death to the destroyers.
That was fifteen years before the time in which I introduce him here. In all those years he had pursued the Indians with a deadly malignity. He had taken part in every Indian war that had broken out, and the number of his victims had been many.
As the years passed away this feeling of vengeance grew fainter, and though he never spared an Indian who came against him with hostile intent, yet he did not go out of his way to seek for them, as he had done. The Yakimas were supposed to be the destroyers of his home and family, and against that nation he cherished an undying enmity. Yet circumstances had led him away from their country, to the hunting-grounds of the Apaches, with whom he had many encounters.
He had gladly accepted the service that would take him back to the land of the Yakimas. In all these years he had gained experience as a guide, in wood-craft, and as an Indian-fighter. No hunter of the plains bore a better reputation for skill, prudence, and knowledge of the Indians than Gummery Glyndon.
His face bore a somewhat morose expression, as I have said, but he was far from being a morose man. Indeed, there was quite a fund of dry humor in his disposition, which was an agreeable surprise to those who judged the man by his saturnine countenance.
Percy Cute was a particular favorite of his, and none in the party enjoyed the boy’s drolleries more than he did. Indeed, both the boys were prime favorites with him, and often accompanied him upon his hunts. He looked upon them in the light of proteges, as he had got them their places in the expedition.
He had met them at Fort Benton, where they had come from Omaha up the Missouri river, on one of the steamboats that ply on that stream, and was rather surprised to hear what had brought them there.
Though partly led by a spirit of adventure, they had a mission, and one of some importance.