"Why?"
Then he went on to tell us that the Indian, Natsab, who ran away in Carson, had passed there telling when he thought we would be along. The Bloody Chief we saw in the valley going out came all through the valley, calling the men to the rocky canyon that leads out of the valley and there they thought to kill us all and divide the spoils, expecting the whole seventeen men to return.
"Why didn't you go?" was asked.
The old man fumbled among his rags and pulled out a piece of tobacco about one and one-half inches square and said, "I showed him that tobacco and told him you gave me it, and I could not fight you as long as that lasted."
"What it that had all been gone?" was asked.
The old man had as mild and pleasant eyes as I ever saw in an Indian's head, and he raised them with as much honesty and simplicity as a child, after looking in the fire a minute, and said:
"I don't know what I would have done."
His heart seemed to correspond with his eye.
The six men with him were his sons and sons-in-law. He kept them from going to fight us. His camp was about a mile from the spring. After talking awhile we tried the "long shot" game on them and found the paper shot through the center as before. We wanted to impress all Indians with the belief that when they fought us, the farther off they could get the safer they would be.
Then we smoked again and all had lunch. The Indians got lots of gifts, the whites none. Then came the good old man's last advice and council: