In spite of every effort on his part and ours, we were unable to do so. It was a providential chance which enabled us, at last, to fasten upon a portion of the guilty parties. These were, unfortunately, all red-skins.
One morning, while on Willow Creek, we fell in with five Pah-utes. It was a surprise party both for them and us, and a luckless surprise for the red-skins. There was no chance for their showing fight. We were nearly five times their own number. Neither could they fly; we had surrounded them. Butch' had at once recognized upon them portions of old Pierson's clothing and some of Hattie's trinkets. We could not shoot them down in cold blood, and after a brief council, decided upon disarming and taking them with us as prisoners to Susanville. Had Cockrell been with them, I honestly believe he would never have left the spot alive. Hasbrouck would certainly have slain him where he stood. Nevertheless, he made no opposition to our present purpose. In his horror and wrath at the crime of the white scoundrel, he seemed to pass over that of the red devils who had aided him in accomplishing it, as scarcely worthy of notice.
Accordingly, they were taken to Susanville and placed in a species of lock-up which there did duty as a jail.
As we quitted Willow Creek, it may perhaps be mentioned that one of the red ruffians appealed to us to let him go, on the score that he had done nothing but "shoot him gun into old white man." This plea of innocence was necessarily unattended to.
We had intended to give them a fair trial, and it was to come off very quickly. It is only in large cities that justice is slow and dilatory. But on the morning immediately preceding the day which had been fixed for it, I mean the second morning of their imprisonment, Harry Arnold, in company with Butch' Hasbrouck, met me. It was in front of J. I. Steward's hotel. The former said:
"Cap! we were coming to see you."
"What is up now?"
He had given me the rank I had held when out with the Rangers. This he seldom did, even then, unless we were in active and trying pursuit of the red-skins. What did it mean?
"Wall, Mose, du yer want the infarnal red cusses who helped murder my Hattie to git clean off?" demanded Butch'.
"Certainly not!"