Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/158

 “Now, Sarah,” he said, “if you will go to your father, tell him and his people that they shall be taken care of and be fed. Get all the well-disposed of your people to come near the troops, where they can be safe. Now, Sarah, if you can succeed, your reward shall be five hundred dollars. Don’t forget to tell them that all who behave well shall be properly fed.”

I said to the captain, “I came through the Malheur Agency on the 6th of the month and there is nothing for them to eat there.”

He said, “Tell them all to come to the troops.”

Then I asked him to write me a letter to take with me in case that my horses should give out and I should come to a ranch where I could get some horses. He wrote,

“To all good citizens in the country:—Sarah Winnemucca, with two of her people, goes with a dispatch to her father. If her horses should give out, help her all you can and oblige

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With this letter I started down the crossing of Owyhee River, about fifteen miles from the Sheep Ranch, at about a quarter of a mile from the place where the stage-driver was killed, and when we got there the citizen-scouts were all asleep. If we had been hostile Bannocks we could have killed every one of them. Some of these scouts were getting from fifteen to twenty-five dollars a day, and this is the way the citizen-scouts earned their money during an Indian war. They go off a little way from the troops and lie down and come back and report that there are Indians within half a mile from the troops. We went into the house and waked them up. I said to them, “Is this the way you all find the hostiles? We could have killed every one of you if we had been they. I want a fresh horse if you have one, as I don’t think one of our horses will stand the trip, as we are going to the Malheur Agency or to the