Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/650

510 Indians would get out and the men on picket would not see them. He said: "I cannot see through it."

About a week or ten days later George and I were coming in just before daylight, when we heard a baby cry on the hillside only a short distance from us. We stopped and listed until we had located it. George dismounted, and I held his horse while he crawled up to see where it was, and found that there was quite a number of squaws and children there. I told him that it would be a matter of impossibility for them to get away from us and the grass so high, for we could track them easily, so I left him there to keep watch and see which way they moved so that we would know how to start after them, and I would ride to headquarters, about two miles away, for assistance to help capture them when it was daylight. I rode slow until so far away that I knew they could not hear the clatter of my horse's feet, and then I put spurs to my horse and rode with all speed to headquarters. When I passed the camp guard he challenged me and I gave my name. I could hear it carried down the line from one to another, "There comes the Captain of the Scouts, there is something up." Rather than wake up a commissioned officer, I woke up my entire scout force, and was back to where George Jones was just at daylight. He said that the squaws had moved in the direction of Clear Lake. There was a heavy dew and we had no trouble in finding their trail and following it; in fact, at times we could ride almost at full speed and follow without difficulty. We had only gone about four miles when we came in sight of them, six squaws, a little boy, a little girl and a baby. When they saw me coming they