278 THE NOZI, ETC. 
fall he may catch a glimpse of a faint camp-fire, with fig 
ures flitting about 
it; but before he can creep within rifle-range of it the figures have disap- 
peared, the flame wastes slowly out, and he arrives only to find that the 
objects of his search have indeed been there before him, but are gone. 
They cooked there their hasty evening repast, but they will sleep some- 
where else, with no camp-fire to guide a lurking enemy within reach. For 
days and weeks together they never touch the earth, stepping always from 
one volcanic stone to another. They never leave a broken twig or a dis- 
turbed leaf behind them. Probably no day of the year ever passes over 
their heads but some one of this doomed nation of five sits crouching on a 
hillock or in a tree-top, within easy eye-shot of his fellows; and not a hare 
“an move upon the earth beneath without its motions being heeded and 
recorded by the watcher’s eye. There are men in and around Chico who 
have sworn a great oath of vengeance that these five Indians shall die a 
bloody death; but weeks, months, and years have passed away, and 
brought for their oaths no fulfillment. There is now wanting only a month 
of four years since they have ever been seen together so that their number 
could be certainly known. In February, 1870, some hunters had sue- 
ceeded in capturing the two remaining squaws, whereupon they opened 
communication with the men, and promised them a safe-conduct and the 
release of their squaws if they would come in and promise to abandon hos- 
tilities. The two men came in, bringing the child. It was the intention of 
the hunters, as one of them candidly avowed to me, to have seized them 
and secretly put the whole fivé out of existence. While they were in 
camp, one of the hunters conceived an absurd whim to weigh himself, and 
threw a rope over a limb for that purpose, at which the wily savages 
took fright, and they all bounded away like frightened deer and escaped. 
But they had remained long enough for an American, as eagle-eyed as them- 
selves, to observe that one of the two warriors had a gunshot wound in one 
hand, and many others on his arm, forming an almost unbroken cicatrix 
from hand to elbow. Probably no white man’s eyes will ever again behold 
them all together alive. 
When they were more numerous than now, they occupied both Mill 
Creek and Deer Creek; but nowadays they live wholly in the great vol- 
