Gimpfirc Stories of Indian Qiaracter 537 



squaw from a buck. Lieutenant Cummings fell into a 

 washout near the sawmill nearly atop of two Indians. 

 They attacked him with knives, but he succeeded in killing 

 both with his pistol — only to find that they were squaws ! 



The struggle was often hand-to-hand, and many of the 

 dead were powder-burned. For a long distance the trail 

 was strewn thick with bodies 



A sergeant and several men were pursuing two isolated 

 fugitives who proved to be a buck and squaw. Suddenly 

 the two fugitives turned and charged their pursuers, the 

 buck armed with a pistol, the squaw with a piece of an iron 

 stove! They were shot down. 



This running fight afoot continued for nearly a mile, 

 when the troops, many of them already badly frozen, were 

 hurried back to the garrison to get needed clotiiing and their 

 moimts. 



[E. B. Bronson, who tells the tale, was in his ranch five 

 miles away that night but the sound of firing at ten 

 o'clock caused him to mount horge and hurry to the Fort 

 with a friend.] 



Presently, nearing the narrow fringe of timber that lined 

 the stream, we could see ahead of us a broad, dark line 

 dividing the snow: it was the trail of pursued and pursuers 

 — the line of flight. Come to it, we halted. 



There at our feet, grim and stark and terrible in the 

 moonlight, lay the dead and wounded, so thick for a long 

 way that one could leap from one body to another; there 

 they lay grim and stark, soldiers and Indians, the latter 

 lean and gaunt as wolves from starvation, awful with their 

 wounds, infinitely pathetic on this bitter night in their 

 ragged, half-clothed nakedness. 



We started to ride across the' trail, when in a fallen buck I 



