"Has anyone see Smoky Hill Thompson?"
Billy Devins said he knew about where Marshall Sewall was, and considered that he and the two men besides himself were on very dangerous ground, and ought to be looked after first; as all the others were believed to be back in the Pease river country. It was conceded, and so decided, that Devins was right.
And yet that night we organized a party of eighteen men to go to Sewall's camp. I was one of the number to go. We started early. West furnished Billy Devins, who was to be a guide, with a saddle-horse. We took one pack-mule, and we were to follow Devins.
He led out in a southwesterly direction, taking us out of the breaks of the Double Mountain Fork; then we kept as nearly due west as we could on account of the breaks.
We made a good 45-mile ride with hardly a halt. When we reached Billy Devins's destroyed camp, Billy ordered Joe Jackson and myself on guard. There were two good lookouts close to this camp; Jackson was sent to the one southeast, and I to the one west of the camp. We were about 200 yards apart.
The boys in camp were busy cooking, for we were all hungry. We had been on guard but a few minutes when Jackson called out: "Here comes a man afoot on our trail."
He came on into camp and dropped down onto the ground—tired, worn out, and hungry; saying, as he did so, "Thank God for this streak of luck!"
When the men had eaten, Joe Freed came out and relieved me, telling me that Marshall Sewall had been killed two days before, about ten o'clock in the forenoon; that the man who had come to our camp was Wild Skillet; that he had struck our trail a mile or so back and knew we were white men, and he had followed our trail to camp. He was one of Sewall's men.
This news was important. I forgot my present hunger, and listened to Freed relate the circumstances connected with Sewall's death: