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Show 292 INDIAN DEPREDATIONS pushed on until dark and discovered the Indians making camp. They had just started a fire. We crawled on, and just as we were ready to fire they heard us, jumped up and ran, but we fired on them. We recovered our horses, which they had taken, and took their outfit. When we returned home we learn-ed that a raid had been made that same night all along the line for about forty miles. A man by the name of Nebeker who was camping just outside of Kanarra lost all his mules. Had we known they were gone, we could have headed them off. We afterwards learned that the Indians had been prowl-ing around for a week or two gathering horses and getting ready to make a general break in one night. They had sat on the hill watching the men put their horses in their stables, and where they could find the door in the dark they took the horses. They went to my stable and I suppose they could not find the door. I had driven four cows and an ox to a nice spot of grass near a spring on the mountain. The Indians had camped there, killed the animals and dried the meat. They drove stock from all those points but the thefts were not discovered until after they had gone. Had it not been that they got angry and shot the mules because they could not get the hobbles off, their success would have been complete. That was the way it was all the time. The Indians could sit on the mountain-side and see where our stock were and what we were doing and then making a dash, they would kill peo-ple who were at work in the fields, or traveling on the roads, rush their stock into the mountains, leav-ing some to drive them, while others fell back and |
