I am, sir, very respectfully,
Your obedient servant,
George M. Love,
1st Lieut. 16th Inf., Acting A. Q. M.
The author now gives Rees's experiences and his observations as to the part he took in it. This is as he dictated it to the author:
I was in Kirwin, Kansas, when I heard of the runaways. It was on the 29th day of September, and anticipating the route they would follow to the Platte river, on account of water, I made a night ride, and got home just at daylight. I met settlers the next morning, and they told me the Indians had camped that night on the Prairie Dog, nine miles above my home. I saddled up and struck that way. When I got about five miles, I met a party of homeseekers, who were bringing in a wounded man toward my place. I went on, and after a while I found the Indians had gone to the Sappa. I then went to Oberlin, found the people badly excited, and there I organized a party.
Poorly armed as they were, I started on the trail. We went from there to Jake Kieffer's ranch. There the wounded began to come in, and the people that got away from the Indians. Here we reorganized and I was elected captain. Then we took the trail of the Indians, and just as we got up the divide, we saw three Indians rise up out of a draw,—man, woman, and boy about sixteen years old. We headed them off to keep them from joining the main band, and drove them to the timber on the Sappa. Here we separated into three parties, one to go above, another below, and the other to scare them out of the brush. The party I was with, when we came to the brush, did not want to go in close. So I saw it was up to me alone. I saw a squaw going up a little divide. I shot twice at her. Then I saw the buck slide down off of a bank and run into the brush, a patch of willows. I got on my horse and rode toward the willows. He rose up and shot at me. I was not more than twenty steps from him. I had been leaning over on the right side of my horse, at the time he shot. I wished to expose as little of my body as possible. I rose up and shot at him. We took shot about for five shots, when in trying to work the cylinder of my revolver, the last cartridge had slipped back, and the cylinder would not work. The warrior had fired his last shot, but I did not know it at the time.
I then went back to a man named Ingalls, and got a Colt's repeating rifle. When I came back to where I had left the Indian, he was gone. He had crossed the Sappa on a drift; and I can't, for the life of me, see how he could have done it. I dismounted and followed over, and found he was soon to be a good Injun. Taking out my knife, he signed to me, "not to scalp him until he was dead," but I had no time to spare; for there was much to do—it seemed to be a busy time of the year. So I took his scalp. I opened his shirt and found four bullet-holes in his chest, that you could cover with the palm of your hand.
SOL. REES'S FIGHT WITH INDIAN.