Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/108

78 As he was falling he threw his tomahawk at me with all the vengeance in him, but missed my head and struck a rock just behind me. I sprang at once and picked it up.

Mr. Hughes was fighting one of the Indians; the other two had attacked Johnnie West, who was on his back with his head against the bank of the wash-out, and they were trying to get a chance to deal him a blow, but he was kicking at them with both feet and was striking so fast with his knife that they had not yet been able to get a lick in on him.

They were so busily engaged with Johnnie that I sprang at once, unseen by them, and buried the tomahawk so deep in the head of one of them that I was unable, for the moment, to recover it. As soon as my Indian was out of the way, Johnnie was on his feet, quick as the twinkling of an eye, and stabbed the remaining one through the heart with his hunting-knife.

In the meantime Mr. Hughes was having a hard fight with his Indian. He succeeded in killing the red fiend but got badly used up. He had a severe wound in the shoulder, also one in the thigh. I received a cut in the wrist, and Johnnie West did not get a severe wound, in fact but little more than a scratch.

The fight and flight being now ended, we went a few rods to a little clump of pine trees, where Mr. Hughes dropped down and said: "Boys, there's no use of talking, I can't go any further; I think I have done my last trappin' and Injun fightin'."

I gathered some limbs and chunks and started a fire, while Johnnie pulled Mr. Hughes' moccasins off and