THE STORY OF THE MASSACRE ON SPILLMAN CREEK—SCOUTS GO TO THE RESCUE—JOE AND ROB TALK OVER THE HORRID WORK OF THE SAVAGES—THE DOG SOLDIERS—CHARLEY BENT—PLACE OF RENDEZVOUS—PARTY STARTS OUT—JOE'S OPINION IS ASKED
The family had lived on their comfortable ranche on the Oxhide for nearly three years. During the whole of this period the valley had been most happily exempt from any raid by the hostile Indians farther west, who for all that time had made incursions into the sparse settlements not a hundred miles away, devastating the country from Nebraska on the north to the border of Texas on the south.
General Sheridan had been ordered by the Government to the command of the Military Department of the Missouri, with headquarters at Fort Leavenworth. The already famous General Custer with his celebrated regiment, the Seventh United States Cavalry, was stationed at Fort Harker, recently established on the Smoky Hill, about four miles from Errolstrath ranche, so the settlers on the Oxhide, and through the valley, felt comparatively safe from any possible raid by the savages into that region.
One beautiful Sunday afternoon in the middle of the May following the autumn in which Joe had received his present of a full Indian dress from the friendly Pawnees, the family were sitting on the veranda of the cabin. Dinner was long since over, and Mr. Thompson was reading aloud from their weekly religious journal, when a horseman suddenly appeared, coming toward the ranche on the trail which led from the mouth of the Oxhide where it empties into the Smoky Hill. He was hatless and coatless, his long hair was streaming in the wind, and his heels were rapping his horse's flanks vigorously, and its breast and shoulders were covered with foam from the desperate gait at which it was urged.
The reading was instantly suspended, and every eye strained toward the unusual object coming toward the house at such a breakneck speed.
"I wonder who that is, and why he rides so fast," inquired Mr. Thompson, addressing himself to no one in the group in particular.
"Something unusual must have occurred," suggested Mrs. Thompson; "some one of the neighbors taken ill suddenly, maybe."
"It's no one we know," spoke up Joe. "I never saw that man before," the individual under discussion having come near enough now for his features to be distinguished, "nor the horse he's on, and I know every man and horse in the whole settlement. There's some trouble not far away, I think, or he would not run his animal that way."
In less than three minutes more, the stranger horseman rode up to the front of the house and jumped off his horse. Hurriedly tying him to the hitching-post, he ran up the steps of the veranda, and in the most excited manner, his eyes wearing a wild look and his breath coming with great difficulty, told Mr. Thompson, who had walked forward to meet him, that the Indians had completely destroyed the little settlement of Spillman Creek that morning about daylight. He alone, as far as he knew, had escaped the massacre. He said that luckily he happened to be down in the timber, getting some wood for his morning fire, and the savages did not see him. He had his pony with him, and when he saw the Indians all dressed in their war-bonnets and hideously painted, he rode to the river and across country as fast as his animal could carry him.