There was no resistance, and little mortality after the first volley. The Indians bolted like rabbits into the brush. The white men then returned leisurely to the village, which they proceeded to burn to the ground.
“It made a grand bonfire,” interrupted Johnny. “Went up like gunpowder. And the Indians yelled and howled at us from the sidehills all the time.”
The raiders had fired a few defiant and random shots in the direction of the howling, and then, after collecting the ponies that had not stampeded, rode slowly back the way they had come.
“Didn’t see anything of our three horses?” I asked.
“Nary hoss,” said Buck Barry. “I figger they jest nat’rally stampeded off when the row started.”
“Are you sure those were the same Indians?” I asked.
A long silence fell.
“Well, what if they wasn’t–and that’s by no means sure,” demanded Buck Barry at last, a little defiantly. “The whole lot is thieves and murderers; and if they’d had a chance at us, you bet they’d have taken it. And we showed the red devils they can’t monkey with us!”
I looked toward the cross over Vasquez, murdered as wantonly as ever man was murdered for plunder, and could find nothing to say. Whatever the eternal equities of the case may be–and long since I have given up trying to guess what they are–the cold, practical fact remains, 243 that never during our stay on the Porcupine did any Indian come near us again. And I am convinced that if the initial stealing of horses and murder had gone without reprisal, we should have been a second time and more boldly attacked. But if that was the wrong village, what a train of reprisals and reprisals again in turn we may have laid!
“Only we didn’t start it, and never would have!” persisted Johnny stoutly.