Page:Recollections of My Boyhood.djvu/44

Rh and another Indian boy was cut on the head by some kind of a projectile, put in motion by the sinewy arm of one of our boys. But this ridiculous affair was not allowed to proceed further, for McKinley, the commander of the fort, in some way, very suddenly pacified us and sent us to our corral. Our boys began the fight, as before stated, but it was claimed that the Indians were picking up the yampas that fell to the ground and selling them to us again. However this may have been, relations between us and the Indian boys became so strained by this affair that we got no more roots.

The boys also had a skirmish with a young buck who was mounted on a pony. This was on a sand flat some distance from the camp, and I only remember that the Indian came galloping his pony towards us with his spear poised in his hand and pointed towards us; that we gave him and his pony a volley of finger stones; that he threw the spear in our direction and it stuck fast in the sand. I also remember that he got away from there as fast as his pony could carry him and left his spear behind.

After the battles of the "tater-house" and of the sand flat had been fought and won by the kids, we noticed that the Indians visiting our camp were sulky and not talkative. One evening after the camp fires had been burning some time, and it was fairly dark, Indians began to drop in singly or by twos, with that noiseless tread peculair to that people. So snakelike was their approach, that a big Indian with a blanket drawn around him would be seen standing or squatting by the fire before his approach had been noticed by us. After a while there were a half dozen or more of them about the camp fires and each one had his blanket over his shoulders and it completely enveloped his body. I don't know that this alarmed the whites or caused them to suspect danger, but the big bucks were sometimes standing and squatting in the way of people about the fires, and were indifferent to the fact.

One of our young men, who did not like Indians, gave a buck a push to get him out of his way, and when the Indian resisted, seized a brand from the fire and struck him a severe blow with it on the shoulders. I heard the blow and saw the sparks fly. The blow was probably aimed at the Indian's head, but he ducked and saved his cranium. This somewhat rough