112 ON THE FRONTIER. 



because, as always was the case, whether in hostile country 

 or on friendly soil, my camp was nightly pitched in a good 

 defensive shape on advantageous ground the waggons 

 parked to make a temporary fort, enclosing the men and 

 mules, and guards properly set ; and perhaps because the 

 certain heavy loss of life to any party who attacked me 

 was a higher price than Indians cared to pay for a pro- 

 spective chance of capturing an empty train. But though 

 the trip was made in safety, it became an anxious and 

 melancholy journey. We daily saw the smouldering ruins 

 of burned and gutted stations busy scenes, when we had 

 last passed that way, of life and motion. Lonely deso- 

 lation had replaced activity and enterprise. The unfor- 

 tunates who had occupied them, then so full of confidence 

 and hope, were murdered. All of them had been our 

 acquaintances, some almost our friends. At one place the 

 bodies of a family of sixteen strewed the ground, looking 

 ghastly and horrid in the bright light of day. There they 

 lay, all, from the gray-headed old grandfather to the last 

 infant the corpses of the sons, their wives and little ones ; 

 their sisters, the old man's three marriageable girls ; an 

 orphan grandchild all lay there, stripped, mutilated, partly 

 charred. Decently and reverentially we put them " below 

 wolf smell." More bitter curses than prayers were said I 

 fear over those graves by the rough and hardy mourners 

 who stood round. " Lo the poor Indian " would have 

 received scant mercy at their hands had a chance for ven- 

 geance presented itself. In after years more than once 

 the memory of that scene has flashed through my mind, 

 and, "Sergeant, pass the word quietly amongst he men 



