“Somehow the Indians had found out the whole thing. We don’t know how they did it, but it was most likely that the wolves and foxes went to digging there for the leather in the boots and saddles, and the Indians saw where they dug, and knew something was hid. All around there were tracks of Indians, and they had taken out more than half of what we had put there.
“While we were talking about the business, and cursing the red skins, we saw five of them coming up the valley. There were four bucks and one squaw, and they hadn’t seen us. So we just laid low and waited for them. They stopped at the foot of the bluff, and the bucks made for the hole, leaving the squaw to take care of their ponies and keep watch.
CAPTURING A SQUAW.
“The squaw sat down, with her back against a tree, about fifty feet from where we were. She was evidently tired, for she dropped her head forward, and didn’t keep much of a watch. Jim Foster, one of the fellows with me, was an old Indian hunter, and knew how to work. He crept up behind her, slipped the belt from his waist, and before she knew what she was about, he had the belt around her neck, and fastened her to the tree. As soon as he had her fast, the other fellow and I ran to the cache, picked up the stump that had been in the hole originally, and put it where it belonged. Then we piled logs and rubbish on top, and stopped up the crevices, and waited a couple of hours, until we thought they had breathed all the air up and were good Indians.”
“What do you mean by good Indians?” I asked.
“Why, don’t you know,” said he, “that all good Indians are dead Indians?”
I saw his point, and after he had terminated the smile with which his axiom was delivered, he went on with the story.
“We made sure that they would never do any more stealing. We didn’t want to kill them, of course, but we thought it would be no more than right to cache them along with the property that was left. There never was a better use made of an Indian than to cache him. As soon as we were satisfied that they couldn’t get out, we took the ponies and went to where our fourth man was waiting with the mules. We distributed our loads on the mules, took the ponies to ride on, and you may believe that we travelled our level best out of that region.”
“And the squaw,” I asked; “did she go with you?”
A CARELESS PLAINSMAN.