Some of the wood-choppers who had been at work a mile and a half up the valley also had an exciting experience during the day with the savages, but came out unharmed.
After the entire party of white men assembled in camp that night, a council was held, and it was determined to send a messenger to the commanding officer of the post at Julesburg, stating the condition of affairs and the number of Indians supposed to be in the vicinity.
The next morning Mr. Coad and his men gathered what cattle they could find, intending to leave for the fort. They started, got on top of the divide, and camped for the night. A raging blizzard set in, one of those terrible storms of snow and wind characteristic of the region, and the cattle sought shelter from the fearful weather by returning to the valley which they had left the day before, and where there was plenty of timber. The party was able, however, to hold a few head. So they hitched them up to the mess-wagon and returned to their old camp, intending to wait until the messenger they had sent to the fort should arrive with troops; but they were not sure he had gone safely through.
The next morning Mr. Coad started east on the divide on the only horse the Indians had left him, and about nine o'clock that night he met Lieutenant Arms, of the Second Cavalry, in command of Company E of that regiment.
Lieutenant Arms told him that he had met a large war-party of savages about four o'clock that afternoon, and was detained fighting them until after dark, when they disappeared and went south, at a point about ten miles west of Sidney. Lieutenant Arms had captured several head of cattle and two of Mr. Coad's horses from the Indians in this engagement.
Mr. Coad returned with the troops to the camp on Lawrence's Fork, arriving there at two o'clock in the morning. The temperature that night was thirty degrees below zero, and the troops suffered terribly from the extreme cold during their march. After arriving in the timber and getting something to eat, all turned in in their blankets and rested until daylight the next morning. As soon as breakfast was disposed of, the command started on their return march, crossed the divide which they had travelled over the previous night, and at three o'clock in the morning reached Pole Creek, where they rested until daylight. As soon as the day dawned they started south, endeavouring to find the trail of the Indians. The weather was extremely cold, the thermometer ranging about thirty degrees below zero. In the afternoon, while on the divide, the snow being very deep, the command was completely lost, and wandered aimlessly for several hours, not knowing which course to take. Finally, when it was nearly dark, they came within sight of Pole Creek, immediately recognized the locality, and were saved.
At night, after travelling all the next day, they reached a ranch about thirty-five miles west of Julesburg, where they stopped and were made comfortable. It was discovered, after the command had thawed out, that out of thirty-six men thirty were more or less frozen; some had frozen noses, some their ears, some their toes, and two had suffered so badly their feet had to be amputated. On the following day an ambulance arrived from Julesburg, to bring in the men who were in the worst condition. Those who were able mounted their horses and reached the post all right.
During those early years, before the growth of the great states beyond the Missouri, a mighty stream of immigration rushed onward to the unknown, illimitable West. Its pathway was strewn with innumerable graves of men, women, and little children. Silence and oblivion have long since closed over them forever, and no one can tell the sad story of their end, or even where they lay down. Occasionally, however, the traveller comes across a spot where some of these brave pioneers succumbed to death. One of the most noted of these may be seen about two miles from the town of Gering, on the Old Trail, in what is now known as Scott's Bluffs County, Nebraska. Around the lonely grave was fixed a wagon-tire, and on it rudely scratched the name of the occupant of the isolated sepulchre, “Rebecca Winter,” and the date, 1852. The tire remains as it was originally placed, and, as if to immortalize the sad fate of the woman, many localities in the vicinity derive their names from that on the rusty old wagon tire: “Winter Springs,” “Winter Creek Precinct,” and the “Winter Creek Irrigation Company”!
CHAPTER VIII. THE PONY EXPRESS.
Owing to the gold discoveries of 1849, the state of California was born in almost a single day. The ocean route to the Pacific was tedious and circuitous, and the impetuosity of the mining population demanded quicker time for the delivery of its mails than was taken by the long sea-voyage. From the terminus of telegraphic communication in the East there intervened more than two thousand miles of a region uninhabited, except by hostile tribes of savages. The mail from the Atlantic seaboard, across the Isthmus of Darien to San Francisco, took at least twenty-two days. The route across the desert by stage occupied nearly a month.