We remained for some time gazing on this horrid sight. No one spoke. At length the lieutenant and sergeant decently covered the mangled body with a blanket. As we were already behind time, the conductor said he could not take back to the station the body of the murdered man. We concluded to remain by it until the arrival of the stage from the West, which was already due at that point.
It was a sad vigil—fortunately not a prolonged one. The stage from the West arrived. It had no passengers. We wrapped poor Tommy in an additional blanket, and the coach drove off, taking him away for ever on this earth from his “old lady and his half-dozen babies over on the Sandy.”
After having examined the “signs” about the place of the murder, the lieutenant and the conductor estimated the number of Indians engaged in the bloody deed at about fifty. Matters became critical. I could not stay inside the stage any longer. I mounted the roof once more, feeling that if I were to be killed by Indians—a fate to which I did not in the least aspire—I wanted to see whence my death-bolt came, and have plenty of room to die in.
The party on top of the stage seemed quite cool, but by no means conversationally inclined. I could see their keen eyes continually making the circuit of the horizon, which traced around us a perfect circle unbroken by mound or shrub.
We reached the Lone Hollow Station, a “swing,” twenty-eight miles from Artesian Wells, without seeing any more signs of Indians. Here we found yesterday’s Western-bound stage. It had started at the usual time, but when within a mile or so of Cypress Spring, an abandoned intermediate or “swing” station, the driver saw the buildings in flames. With a glass he could discern Indians about the burning structures. He had wisely concluded to turn back to the station he had left, and there we found him. He had no passengers.
Lone Hollow Station was kept by a solitary stock-tender—an old fellow who received “$75 per month and found,” for offering himself as a perpetual candidate for immolation by his red brethren.
When we arrived at the Lone Hollow, I felt an unaccountable buoyancy and a rather humiliating craving for food—animal or vegetable. Fortunately, the old stock-trader had some biscuit and a large panful of dried apples. Tea was soon made, and I ate an immense meal. I was not alone in this, however; the lieutenant, the conductor, in short everybody, ate voraciously, except the women, who still clung to the coach, and could not be prevailed upon to change their position for a moment. The men were all in high spirits, and there seemed to be no more trace of Tommy John’s memory than if he had never been.
“How do you find it here now?” asked the lieutenant of the old stock-tender. “Pretty lonely?”
“Well,” answered John, “rather. Before they sent away the hosses and tuk to mules, things wuz more sociable-like. I got fond of them hosses, and them hosses got fond of me. But a mule ain’t got no feelin’ for nobody. You can’t trust ’em. They’re too tricky. I didn’t feel near so lonesome last year. I had a big yellow dog that was the best companion I ever had. But he got pisoned, by eatin’ wolf-bait most likely; and now I ain’t got nothin’ but two small pups, and they ain’t no society for a man.”