Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/290

222 thoroughly for eight or ten miles in every direction daily, I took my same four men that were out the trip previous, four days' rations, and started out again.

All my talking did not prevent a surprise, for the second day alter our departure the Indians made an attack on the herders, captured twenty-two horses in broad daylight and killed one of the herders. The same evening about sundown cney made an attack on the command, and after a hard fight for an hour or more, the Indians retreated, leaving sixty dead Indians on the battlefield, there being eleven soldiers killed and twenty wounded.

On my return Col. Elliott told me not to leave the camp so far any more, for, said he, "I am satisfied if you had been here we would not have had the surprise."

I told the Colonel what kind of country we would have for the next seventy-five miles; plenty of water and grass, abundance of game and the country full of hostile Indians.

The reader will understand that this was the year 1856. The Klamath Indians and the tribe afterwards known as the Modocs, of whom mention will be made later on in this work, were one and the same tribe; and up to this time they did not know what it was to be whipped. Besides there had been but little travel through this part of the country without experiencing a great deal of trouble with those Indians.