346 ON THE FEONTIER. 



combat? and could hardly be appeased by having it ex- 

 plained to him that, as he and the other chiefs were accom- 

 panying us as delegates from his tribe to our chief, we 

 were responsible to them and him for their safety, and that 

 therefore, glad as we should have been for the assistance 

 of three such allies, we had not dared to risk their being 

 killed or wounded. 



We took stock of the plunder which had become our 

 spoil, and from the sign in sight, tried to determine what 

 the p'arty we had recently surprised had been about when 

 we came so unexpectedly upon them, where they came 

 from, and what they had been doing. Alas ! the story was 

 only too plain. They were a return war-party, on their 

 way back from a successful foray upon a mining camp. 

 As we gathered together the plunder, the different articles 

 clearly told the tale. The fresh skins of two horses bore 

 on their flanks brands which we well knew. A lot of 

 tobacco was wrapped up in a piece of paper, covered with 

 memoranda in the handwriting of an old associate of the 

 author's. A pair of buckskin trousers no doubt brought 

 away to be cut into Indian leggings were instantly 

 recognised by their peculiar cut and fringes. They had 

 belonged to another member of the same mining camp. 

 Packages of fresh horse-meat (the horses had no doubt been 

 killed in the attack on the miners), of bacon, sugar, coffee, 

 salt, flour, beans, and other stores, and about thirty pounds 

 of blasting-powder, tied up in an empty flour sack, were 

 incontestable evidences of a captured and plundered mining 

 hacienda, and of murdered miners. This party of In- 

 dians was unquestionably the band of Pinalas, of whose 



