Cutting one of the horses loose from their team, he helped Kesler on to it, in spite of the bullets which were rattling on the other side of the wagon. Then, bidding him ride to the Lake to ask for assistance from the soldiers, he proposed to fight it out alone with the Indians. Kesler remonstrated vainly with him. Giving to the horse he had cut loose a heavy lash with the whip he had previously been using, he said:
"Go, yer darned fool, unless yer wish both on us to be done for, by the red skunks."
The animal started with Kesler, followed by a pelting shower of bullets. None of them, however, struck either him or the horse. This unusual hint, in all probability, accelerated the speed of the latter, for he seems to have made good time. In about twenty minutes, Kesler arrived at the place where the blue-coats were stationed, and on seeing Captain Hall, told him the situation in which he had left Frank Drake, and begged him to send his friend "help at once." This officer replied in the usual official slang of the Plains:
"I've lost no Indians, and I'll be hung, if I'm going to trot out my men for nothing."
"Nothing! Hain't I told yer Frank Drake is fighting the red devils, by himself?"
"By this time," was Hall's reply, "the man is killed. We shan't find him."
In spite of this refusal, in which Uncle Sam's servant persisted, some few of his men, accompanied by several settlers who chanced to be present, at once mounted their horses and galloped off, leaving Kesler behind, to have his leg attended to by the army surgeon, if the post rejoiced in such an appendage. This is by no means invariably the case. The party galloping to save the plucky Frank Drake, made even better speed than his companion had done.
No sooner were their rapidly advancing hoofs heard, than the cowardly Indians fled.
Upon arriving at the point where the team had been left standing, they, at first, saw no living creature save one of the remaining horses. Frank Drake was found by them stretched under the wagon. When the red-skins ran, he knew relief was at hand, and had fainted away from loss of blood. Wounded in almost every part of his body as he was, by great luck, not one of the holes made by the Pah-utes was dangerous. Two of them were lying dead on the farther side of the road; and when he revived, he told those who had rescued him he thought he had seen a third of them carried away as they were approaching.