“There were twenty-six of those wagons and they trailed along as if they were carrying dead freight; no faster nor slower than the ordinary freighters, and making camp at the usual places, forming the usual corral of wagons and herding stock at night. The train reached Fort Kearny and slowly went across the South Platte to Julesburg. Occasional Indian signs made Harney have hope.
“The outfit was seventy miles on the way to Laramie when the big day came, and it came quick. Behind them on the trail the men on the outside saw a war party—some say there were five hundred Indians in it. Even if they hadn’t been painted the fact that they were without women or children would have told the story. The train made the usual preparations for an Indian attack, throwing the wagons into a circle, or more of an ellipse, and unhooking the five lead yokes to each wagon. A front wheel of each wagon touched a hind wheel of the one in front and the tongues were turned to the outside. At the front end of the corral an opening about fifteen feet wide was left, but at the rear the opening into the corral was about fifty feet wide. That, also, was according to the freighters’ methods; after a night camp the cattle would be driven into the corral through the big end to be yoked for the day.
“Harney didn’t have time to drive his oxen into the corral, or else he didn’t want to. Only the five yoke of leaders were unhooked and they were then chained to the front wheel of their wagon. The space in the corral was all clear for the Indians, whose method of attacking a wagon train was to rush into the corral and do their shooting. They were a happy lot of braves this day; the war band started for the train when the corral was forming; they spread out like a fan and then came together again and started for the big opening as hard as their war ponies could carry them. A whooping, variegated mob with no more clothes than the paint gave it fell into the corral and then real fun began.
“Those soldiers, who had been sweating under canvas for a few weeks wanted excitement and revenge. The tarpaulins went up and they shot down into that mess of braves as fast as they could load. The two mountain guns completed the surprise and the bucks hardly fired a shot before their ponies were climbing over one another to get out the way they came. It was the only real Indian panic. When the last Sioux brave able to ride disappeared across the prairie there was a big mess to clean up. In those days the Indians needed school all the year around. However, one old buck, a little chief, seemed to be impressed. He was near a mountain gun when the fire opened. ‘Harney is the man who shot wagons at us,’ is the way he told about it years later.
*****
Charles S. Stroble, “Mountain Charley,” known as the cowboy painter, was adopted by the Ute Indians at the age of nineteen. I have often heard him tell the following experience:
“It was the most marvelous instance of daredevil bravery I ever witnessed. It happened in 1866 when I was living with the Utes west of the range in Middle Park, Colorado. They had adopted me a year or so before when I was twenty years of age. My name in Ute was Paghaghet, which means ‘long-haired.’
“It was at this time that the old feud between the Utes and Arapahoes was at its height. Our scouts found the Arapahoes coming in from North Park in the endeavor to surprise some of the Utes’ hunting parties. Our runners having come in and informed us, we soon collected a war party and started north to intercept our enemies.
“I was with the scouting party which went in advance, and I was the only white man in the entire tribe. We found the sign left by their scouts, and then concealed ourselves until our war party could come up. As soon as reinforcements arrived we deployed on either side of a gulch or canon, with our horses hidden away among the rocks and timber in charge of horse-holders.
“We had not waited long when we sighted the advance of the Arapahoes down below us in the gulch. We were unnoticed, because we left no tracks in the gulch and had deployed some distance below.