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Rh has never been able to get a satisfactory explanation of the action of Mr. McBean, although he requested his friend, Mr. Ogden, to seek for it when he went up the river a little later to capture the murderers. Mr. Hinman has remarked, during the course of these conversations, that if Archibald McKinley, or a man like him, had been in charge of the fort at Walla Walla, the massacre would never had happened.

Mr. Hinman started upon the return trip as soon as possible. The journey was necessarily slow, and to add to the delay, one of the Indians had died. In about three and a half days, however, the return was made; when about fifteen miles from The Dalles the home of his Indian boatman was reached, and it was learned that the mission was safe. Reaching The Dalles, Mr. Hinman went as quickly as possible to the house. He hastily greeted his wife and called Perrine Whitman to the upper chamber to tell him privately what he had learned upon his journey down the river. Scarcely had they reached the room when Perrine Whitman told him in rather a careless way it was rumored that there was a band of "Indians in the neighborhood, and that they had come to kill the Bostons. No sooner had this been said than, looking from the window, they saw five powerful Cayuse bucks coming toward the mission. Mr. Hinman naturally supposed that they were the Indians mentioned in the dispatch which he had heard read in the office of the fur company at Vancouver, and that there were more of them. Calling upon Perrine Whitman to barricade the doors and windows, he went out through the Indian room in the rear of the house and started to run towards the camp of the Wascoes for assistance. He had run but a hundred feet when one of the Indians appeared round the house. He disappeared again, and Mr. Hinman, supposing that he had gone to get his pony to ride him