Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/591

Rh she said, "I made a desperate effort and freed om: of my hands, although it cost me a great deal of pain. After I was free I soon released my sister and we then ran for our lives. We had got but a short distance when the Indians discovered our absence, and raising the yell, started after us. My sister outran me and I soon hid it a little thicket and they missed me, but I fear they have overtaken her.

I asked her what her name was and she said it was Mary Gordon, and her father's name was Henry Gordon. He was sheriff of their county in Illinois for two years before starting west. I now fired the two shots to call Jim and Mike, and they were not long in getting there.

As soon as Mike came up he said: "Sure, Captain, and wasn t I after tellin's ye's that it was no bloody spalpeen of an Apache's thrack that I be follerin' lasht avenin'?"

Miss Gordon now seemed just to have realized that she was alone in a wild country, for she wrung her hands and said: "Oh! what shall I do in this desolate country without a relative or a friend; it would have been better if I had been killed when my poor father and mother were. O, kind sir, what will I do?" and she sobbed as if her heart would break.

I told her not to grieve, that we would protect her and see that she got safely to civilization, and that we would also try to find her sister. I asked her if she was not very hungry and she said she was, as she had eaten nothing for almost thirty-six hours. At that Mike said: "Sure, Captain, it's meself that has a pairt of me rations lift, and Oi'll go and get it for the poor crayther, and