LIFE IN THE FAR WEST 111 



retaliate upon them for the trouble their incessant 

 attacks had entailed upon the camp. The suggestion 

 was highly approved of, and instantly acted upon. 

 Springing to their feet, the trappers seized their rifles, 

 and commenced the slaughter. The Indians, panic- 

 struck, fled without resistance, and numbers fell before 

 the death-dealing rifles of the mountaineers. A chief, 

 who had been sitting on a rock near the fire where the 

 leader of the trappers sat, had been singled out by the 

 latter as the first mark for his rifle. 



Placing the muzzle to his heart, he pulled the trigger, 

 but the Indian, with extraordinary tenacity of life, rose 

 and grappled with his assailant. The white was a tall 

 powerful man, but, notwithstanding the deadly wound 

 the Indian had received, he had his equal in strength to 

 contend against. The naked form of the Indian twisted 

 and writhed in his grasp, as he sought to avoid the 

 trapper's uplifted knife. Many of the latter's com- 

 panions advanced to administer the coup-de-grace to the 

 savage, but the trapper cried to them to keep off : " If 

 he couldn't whip the Injun," he said, " he'd go under." 



At length he succeeded in throwing him, and, plunging 

 his knife no less than seven times into his body, he 

 tore off his scalp, and went in pursuit of the flying 

 savages. In the course of an hour or two, all the party 

 returned, and, sitting by the fires, resumed their suppers, 

 which had been interrupted in the manner just described. 

 Walker, the captain of the band, sat down by the fire 

 where he had been engaged in the struggle with the 

 Indian chief, whose body was lying within a few paces 



