Expedition to John Day River 191 



answer the questions which I had been asking my- 

 self ever since I left the top of the mountain. 



It seems that three hundred Bannocks, or Snakes, 

 under their chosen leader, Egan, had left the Mal- 

 heur Agency, several hundred miles south, and after 

 stealing six thousand horses, mainly from the 

 French brothers' ranch, were now on their way 

 north to join Homely, the chief of the Umatillas, at 

 Fox Prairie. General Howard, who was in hot 

 pursuit, had sent a courier ahead of his command to 

 the settlers in the John Day valley, advising them to 

 gather at some central locality, build a stockade, and 

 take their women and children into it for protection 

 from the treacherous redskins. Everyone in the 

 valley, except Mr. Mascall and an old man who kept 

 the mail station on Cottonwood Creek, a mile to the 

 south, had taken this advice and gone to Spanish 

 Gulch, a mining town on top of the mountains about 

 ten miles southwest. 



Near sundown Bill Day came in, having heard the 

 news at the Indian camp. He instantly insisted that 

 we leave everything and go to Spanish Gulch. It 

 was foolish, he said, to risk our lives going back to 

 warn Jake. On the long trail up the mountain we 

 should be in full sight of the South Fork, down 

 which the Indians were expected to come, and it 

 would take us half a day to climb those four thou- 

 sand feet and hide ourselves in the canyons on the 



