Page:Life Amongst the Modocs.djvu/301



stealing upon it at night and lying in wait till dawn.

It was a bloody affair for the Indians. More than a hundred lay heaped together about the lodges, where they fell by rifle, pistol, and knife.

The white butchers scalped the dead every one. One of the ruffians, known as Dutch Frank, cut off their ears and strung them about his horse s neck. After drawing off the force some of the men lingered behind and shot and plundered the medicine-man, or priest. This priest is a non-com batant, is never armed, and comes upon the field only after the fight to chant for the dead. This one was dressed in a costly robe of sables, with a cap made of skins of the white fox. The rear of our force, on return to camp, showed a man dressed in this singular garb still wet with blood.

I was glad when we broke camp to return. We had found the valley without a white man ; we left it with scarcely an Indian.

I had had a hard time of it. I had endured insults from the roughs of the party rather than enter into their battles, which were generally fought out with the fist. It had in fact become intolerable. One morning I gently cocked my pistol, and asked the ruffian who had taken more than one occasion to insult me to step out. He declined to do this, said he was not my equal in the use of arms, but that some lucky day he would get even. He waited his