Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/581

Rh ward California. For the next two or three days everything was undergoing a change around camp; rigging up packs and fitting up in general.

The soldiers who had their horses killed were mounted on the choice horses that we had captured from the Indians, which made very fair cavalry horses.

As soon as we had completed our arrangements Gen. Crook started back for Fort Yuma, much wiser than he came, while we pushed farther out on the Butterfield route, with two companies of cavalry and fifty infantry-men.

We traveled four days from our old camp before making a general halt. The evening of the fourth day just a short time before we were ready to go into camp the scouts came in and reported having seen a small band of Indians only a short distance west of us, and they said they had watched them go into camp.

I reported to the Lieutenant and he started with one company of cavalry after them, leaving orders for the command to go into camp at the next water, which was about a mile ahead of us. This proved to be a small hunting party, and they in some way discovered us before we got to their camp. When we came in sight of them we were about a quarter of a mile away from their camp and they had their horses all packed and were beginning to mount. We gave chase, but they had the start of us so that we only got two out of the band, but we crowded them so close that they had to leave their pack-horses, and we got all of them, there being twenty.

I captured a fine American horse that showed good breeding. He was a sorrel, with white hind feet and a