Page:In a Steamer Chair and Other Stories.djvu/244

232 "What I have read you," said the physician, folding up the paper again, and placing it in his pocket-book, "is strictly and accurately true, otherwise, of course, I would not have so reported to the Government. Wolf Tusk was the chief of a band of irreconcilables, who were now in one part of the West and now in another, giving a great deal of trouble to the authorities. Wolf Tusk and his band had splendid horses, and they never attacked a force that out-numbered their own. In fact, they never attacked anything where the chances were not twenty to one in their favor, but that, of course, is Indian warfare; and in this, Wolf Tusk was no different from his fellows.

"On one occasion Wolf Tusk and his band swooped down on a settlement where they knew that all the defenders were away, and no one but women and children were left to meet them. Here one of the most atrocious massacres of the West took place. Every woman and child in the settlement was killed under circumstances of inconceivable brutality. The buildings, such as they were, were burned down, and, when the men returned, they found nothing but heaps of smoldering ruin.

"Wolf Tusk and his band, knowing there would be trouble about this, had made for the broken ground where they could so well defend themselves.