"Look hout, Mose!"
We were in the grip of the red-skins.
The struggle was furious but brief. Our assailants had been joined by a dozen other Indians, who had been lurking without, and it was not long before we had our hands tied behind us, and we were on our way to Goose Lake.
Before starting, it must frankly be said, that with the usual red instinct for appropriating everything which comes in their way, my cabin had been thoroughly gutted. Ammunition, provision, blankets—nay, everything portable—and there was nothing which was not portable in it—had become the property of the copper-colored rascals.
Placing me in front, and Butch' and Bill behind me, in regular Indian file, they kept on either side of us, forcing us to hurry on as speedily as they could compel us to move.
It was impossible for me to forget my past experience, and I mentally resolved, if I were able to do so, that I would sell my life in square fight, rather than undergo a second time the torture to which I had then been subjected. At last, there seemed a chance for doing so. We had been compelled to move along at a smart trot for some six or seven hours, so far as I was able to measure time, when, from what cause I cannot say, although it was probably the continual friction, I felt that the ligature round my wrists was sensibly looser. My hands were able to slip through the thongs. I dared not tell either of my companions what I had done, and ask them whether or not they might be able to do the same. Some of the red rascals might understand English. One or more of them might even be renegade whites. What could I do to release them? The idea came to me like a flash of lightning. Pretending to stumble, I pitched forward, and recovering myself, got a blow on my face from one of our captors. It was apparently from one of the same thongs with which our wrists had been bound. Then, I uttered a shrill and prolonged cry as if of pain.
After this, I found myself the last of the three.
Two minutes had scarcely passed, and Bill's hands had been freed. Mine had untied the thongs which bound them. He would have wit enough to loose Butch'. Life on the Plains and in the great West, sharpens man's mother-wit wonderfully.
Day was not yet breaking.
That heavy darkness was upon us, which so generally precedes dawn.