Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/200

 Here my brother laughed so that I thought he would never stop. At last he said, “Dear sister, they had a cannon on a mule, and they shot at us before they took it off the mule’s back, and the poor mule fell down the steep mountain.”

Here we all laughed. Brother said, “Some of our people said if the soldiers were going to shoot mules at them they had better go away, and they travelled all night without stopping. They only said that to make fun.”

After travelling three days we got to Silver City. We went to Tinker’s Mill, on Tinker’s Creek, and camped for the night.

General Forsythe received instructions to divide his command,—Sanford to accomplish what had been given the whole, and Bernard to deviate southward and gather up the Indians who might be lurking in the neighborhood of Duck Valley, South Mountain, and the region on to McDermitt, General Forsythe himself to go at once to Boise City to take command of the troops to the south and east of Boise City. I was ordered to go with Captain Bernard and Captain Winter’s company to Duck Valley, to gather up my people, and Brother Lee, with his wife, to go with some of our people who were there. They were told to go with them to Camp McDermitt, Nevada, and two days after we left Silver City we went to Duck Valley, and found some of my people there. They were very glad to see me. I told them that the order was that all our people were to go to Camp McDermitt. The captain told me to tell them that they must go, because the citizens might mistake them for Bannocks, and would kill them. He told me to say that the citizens were very angry with the soldiers because they would not kill all the Indians they could find. “We don’t want,” he said, “to kill good Indians, but we want to be your friends, and we don’t want to see the citizens kill you. That is why I