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1ness sometimes became temerity, their love of liberty license, and their justice revenge, and the wife of the pioneer was like unto him.

When the company came marching back into the fort without any Indians either dead or alive and without a battle to report, excitement ran high and when it became known upon what terms they had allowed the Indians to remain, the excitement increased. There could be no talk of lynching, because the company contained practically all the fighting men of the settlement, so the women with busy tongues took the matter into their own hands, and when the company was assembled, appeared before it, and, in the presence of an excited crowd, presented to the Captain a woman's red petticoat as a banner for his soldiers. It was a deadly insult and the company quailed under it.