After a very brief struggle, the wholly unexpected assault of their three prisoners, and their four-footed or four-handed ally, on the red devils, resulted in a complete victory.
The yet living Indians cleared out, leaving us masters of the field. As the day was now gradually breaking, we were enabled to count the dead, and exercise a proprietary right in their scalps. What was of much more advantage to myself, I was enabled to recapture nearly the whole of my stolen property, as well as a number of guns, corresponding with that of the dead, which necessarily changed hands.
Eight of the scoundrels would have no more chance of troubling their white brethren.
This enumeration includes the one whom Charley had so considerately squeezed out of this life, very much, as Butch' afterwards remarked—
"As a younker squeezes a ripe orange."
It was late in the afternoon, when we arrived again at my cabin. Upon entering the hole in the snow which led to it, we found Harry Arnold, Ben Painter, and many of the boys there. They had preceded our coming by some twenty minutes. The footprints visible on the outside of my dwelling, as well as the thoroughly emptied condition of its interior, had readily given them a thorough apprehension of our condition. When we returned, they were on the point of preparing to follow on the trail of the red savages.
Of course, we had to relate our adventures since the preceding night. This, however, did not take long, as the demands of famished nature were too exacting. We had tasted neither bite nor sup since noon on the preceding day.
I may here state, that much to the mortification of Butch' and Brighton Bill, as well as somewhat to my own, it became evident that the Rangers considered my young Grizzly as the real hero of the occasion. Indeed, Painter proposed to give him a horn of old Rye, and would have done so, had I not peremptorily forbidden it, not only on the score of its possible effects upon his innocent inside, but also because our stock of that necessary article was getting very low.
After our meal, which I ate ravenously, and presume the two who had been my fellow-captives did the same, "Long" Dorsey (he stood six feet two, in his stockings) and Lute Spencer arrived. Some minutes after, we heard a voice whistling the familiar tune "Joe Bowers." This was "small" Tom Harvey, who had lingered in their rear. Seeing they had entered without exciting any commotion within the cabin, he concluded no Indians were in the immediate neighborhood. Otherwise, he would undoubtedly have refrained from allowing his lips this exercise.
We were told by Lute Spencer that they had paused at Bob Thorn's cabin by the way. He was more generally known by his intimates and associates as Dirty Bob.