These people, after an absence of about a year, were now returning from Elizabeth City, a recently-started mining town in New Mexico, to their former home, about forty miles east of our present camp, which they had left the preceding season under circumstances that were sad, indeed. About three years before, the family, then consisting of Mr. Sydney and wife, and their two daughters, had moved from Ohio to Kansas and settled on a tributary of the Solomon. Availing himself of the homestead law, Mr. Sydney took a tract of one hundred and sixty acres, and commenced improving it. One of the daughters soon married a young man to whom she had been betrothed at the East, and who at once set earnestly to work to make for himself and young wife a home in the new land. The houses of the father and the child were but half a mile apart, and, no timber intervening, each could be plainly seen from the other. For a time this little colony of two families was very happy. Having had the first choice, their farms were well situated, embracing both river and valley, and their herds, provided with rich and unlimited range, increased rapidly. Soon rumors came from below that a railroad, on its way to the Rocky Mountains, would shortly wind its way up the Solomon Valley, bringing civilization to that whole region, and daily mails within a few miles of their doors.
The second year of prosperity had nearly ended, when one morning a man from the settlements above dashed rapidly past Mr. Sydney's house, turning in his saddle to cry that the Cheyennes had been murdering people up the river, and were now sweeping on close behind him. The message of horror was scarcely ended when the dusky cloud appeared in sight, rioting in its tempest of death down the valley. Midway between home and the house of her daughter, Mrs. Sydney was overtaken by the yelling demons. In vain the agonized husband pressed forward to the rescue, firing rapidly with his carbine. She was killed before his eyes, but not scalped, the Indians evidently considering delay dangerous.
It is a fact that speaks volumes in illustration of the mingled ferocity and cowardice that characterize the wild Indians of to-day that, in all that terrible Solomon massacre, not a single armed man who used his weapon was harmed, nor was one house attacked. The victims were composed entirely of the surprised and the defenseless, overtaken at their work and on the roads.
Passing the dead body of the mother, the Cheyennes, on their wiry ponies, swept onward, like demon centaurs, toward the home of the daughter. Sitting by our fire at evening, with that dreary, fixed look which one never forgets who has once seen it, the young woman told us the story of her childless widowhood. Her face was one of those which, smitten by sorrow, are stricken until death. Once evidently comely, the smiles and warm flush had died out from it forever—just as in the lapse of centuries the colors fade from a painting. Though scarcely twenty-five, her youth was but an image of the past. She told her story in that mechanical, absent sort of manner which showed that no morning had followed the evening of that desolate day. She was still living with her dead.
"The Lord gave me then a cup so bitter," she said, "that its sting drove a mother's joy from my heart forever. I have been at peace since, because, among the dregs, I found that God had placed a diamond for me to wear when I was wedded to him. Even then I did not rebel and reproach my Maker, but I sunk down with one loud cry, and it went right along to the great white throne up there, with the spirits of my husband and my babe. I thought I could see them in the air, like two white doves flitting upward, bearing with them, as part of our sacrifice, the cry that I gave, when my heart-strings seemed to snap, and I knew that I was a widow and childless. Perhaps I was crazed for a moment, or—I do not know—perhaps my spirit really did go with them part of the way. The neighbors found me there for dead, and I remained cold, till they brought in my dear babe, my poor, mutilated babe, and placed him on my breast. His warm blood must have woke me, and I sat up, and saw them bringing John's body to lay it by me. And then the whole scene came before me again, and it seemed so stamped into my very brain, that shutting my eyes left me more alone with my murdered ones and the murderers. And I just dragged myself where I could look at the setting sun, and tried with its bright glare to burn the scene from off my vision, so that, if I went mad, there wouldn't be any memory of it left. For mad people have their memories and suffer from them, and they know it, and the very fact that they know it keeps them mad. I went through it all.
"A person dreaming is not rational, and yet may suffer so, and feel it too, as to shudder hours after waking up. There was John, running toward the house with our baby boy, and the savages yelling and whipping their ponies, trying to get between the open door and him. Alone, he could have saved himself. And our baby thought John was running for play, and was clapping his little hands and chirping at me as the savages closed around my husband. I had only time to pray five words, 'O God, save my husband!' and it did not seem an instant until I saw the poor body I loved so well lying on the ground, and they standing over, shooting their arrows into it. Baby was not killed, but thrown forward under one of the horses, and I had just taken a step or so toward him, when an Indian, who seemed to be the chief, lifted him by the dress to his saddle. I think his first intention was to carry him with them, but, seeing some of our neighbors hurrying toward us, they struck the baby with a hatchet, and hurled him to the ground. At the instant they struck him, he was looking back at me with his great blue eyes wide open and staring with fright."
And then the poor woman, having finished her story, began sobbing piteously.
The Solomon had numberless tales of these terrible massacres equally as harrowing as this, and I could fill pages of this volume with chapters of woe that terminated many a family's history. The result of these and other Indian atrocities is probably yet remembered throughout the entire country. Kansas well nigh rebelled against a government which left her unprotected. The War Department authorized vigorous measures, and the Governor of the State raised a regiment and at its head took the field. Through blows from Custar and Carr, the savages found out, at last, that the dogs of war which they let loose might return to bay at their own doors.
Two women from the Saline were carried into captivity by the Indians, and taken as wives by two of their chiefs. One day Carr, at the head of his troops, looked down into the valley upon the encampment of a band especially noted for its hostility, now lying in fancied security below him. The two white captives were in the wigwams. Suddenly, to the ears of the savages, came a murmur from the hill-side like the first whisper of a torrent.
Instantly, almost, it increased to a roar, and, as they sprung to their feet and rushed forth, the blue waves of vengeance dashed against the village, and broke in showers of leaden spray upon them. Mercy put no shield between them and that annihilating tempest. Every savage in the number was a fiend, and, as a band, they had long been the scourge of the border. Their hands were yet red with the blood of the massacres upon the Saline and Solomon, and white women toiled in the wigwams of their husbands' murderers. One of the captives, Mrs. Daley, was killed by the savages, to prevent rescue; the other was saved, and restored to her husband.