For our future safety I thought it best to teach our neighbors a lesson in gun tactics, for we felt sure their knowledge of guns was limited to hearsay, they were so very wild and unacquainted with white men. My plan was as follows: I went into a narrow ravine well out of sight, cut a couple of leaves out of my memorandum book, doubled them, shot a hole through the center and then cut them in two. One of these I secretly gave to Mr. Kinsey. The interpreter and I then got into high words. The Indians wanted to know what we were talking about. He told them that I thought I could beat him shooting. They manifested much interest in the matter. I took a leaf from my book, folded and cut it exactly like the first and put it in the split of a stick about three feet long, gave this to Mr. Kinsey, all in plain view of the natives, and he put it up about one third of a mile off, but exchanged papers on the way and substituted the one with a hole in the center.
The interpreter shot with a dragoon revolver and sent an Indian for the mark. He came back on the run and talking as hard as he could. The Indians all joined in the talk but superstitiously avoided touching the paper.
I could not, of course, shoot better than that and therefore did not try; besides, it was getting dark.
The following morning, which was the 17th of November, one of the natives volunteered to go with us, saying that he "lived over that way." He ran on foot by the side of our horses all day and we rode most of the time on the gallop.
That night, about 1 o'clock, the Indian ran away from the guard— one man with gun in hand—and got clear with his life and two blankets that were not his.
In the morning we found his tracks in the trail ahead of us and we were satisfied that evil was designed against us. We were but a day-and-a-half's ride from the south end of Ruby Valley, and two and one-half days' ride from the north end, where most of the Indians were.
That day, at noon, we came to water on a high ridge, from which I could see a canyon pass through the mountains at the north end of Ruby Valley, which lay north by north-east from us, and the south end nearly east, leaving a great angle or elbow for us to make, which was an object to save. From one place only on this high ridge could be seen this low place in the distant mountains; and as soon as my eyes rested on it the idea was given me that we could get through that pass and save a great distance, and what else it might save I did not know, unless it was our hair. I at once informed the men of the gap in the mountains and my idea that it was best to travel that way; they agreed with me. We turned our horses that way and every one of us felt right sure then that in the plan was our safety.
We traveled that afternoon and until perhaps 12 o'clock in the night and camped on a creek at the foot of the gap, probably ten miles from the top, where we made neither light nor noise.
[CHAPTER IV.]
PREMONITIONS OF DANGER—LEARN OF AN ATTEMPT TO KILL US—AN INDIAN'S ADVICE—UNDECIDED ABOUT WHAT COURSE TO TAKE—APPEAL TO THE LORD—PRAYER ANSWERED—REACH HOME IN SAFETY.