Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/629

Rh Canby himself and have a talk with him. This was on Friday previous to the Sunday on which they were to meet in council.

In the afternoon of the same day it was reported that there had been Indians seen along Tule Lake. I mounted my horse and started with a platoon of soldiers and a sergeant, and when we had advanced about twelve miles I was riding about two hundred yards in advance I saw something dodge into a bunch of sarvis brush. Beckoning to the sergeant, he dashed up to my side and said: "What's up, Captain?"

"I got a glimpse of something just as it ran into that patch of brush, and I think it was an Indian."

He had his men surround the brush and I went to scare the Indian out. I searched that patch of brush thoroughly, but could find no Indian or anything else, and the boys all enjoyed a hearty laugh at my expense.

The sergeant proposed that we all have a smoke, so we turned our horses loose to graze. The sergeant lit his pipe, threw off his overcoat and laid down to rest. As he cast his eyes heavenward in the direction of the top of the only pine tree that stood in that patch of brush, he exclaimed: "Captain, I have found your Indian." Of course we all commenced looking for the Indian, and I asked where he was, whereupon he told me to look up in the pine tree, and on looking I beheld an Indian with whom I was well acquainted, as he had been to my ranch several times in company with Captain Jack.

I asked him to come down, telling him that I would protect him if he would, but he would not utter a word,