Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/152

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148
Life Among the Piutes.

about the outbreak of the Bannocks. I told him I did not know anything about it till yesterday, when a man met me at the Summit, beyond Camp Lyon, who told me. He then asked me if I knew Captain Bernard. I told him I did. “He will be here to-night,” he said, “or to-morrow sure, with his command.” He asked me who the man was who was with me. I told him I did not know much about him, but he and his little daughter were going to Silver City. All this time I little thought of the talk that was going on about me, until about twenty scouts arrived and with them a Piute Indian. Then the captain of the scouts came to me and asked me to talk English with him, not Indian. So I asked him who he was. He said, “Me name Piute Joe.”

“What is the matter?” said I.

“Me no see,” he said, “where you all going—me hope no sauce—” I said, “Captain, what is the use of my talking to you? If you are afraid of me there is a white woman who can talk my language well, You can call her and she can tell you if I say anything wrong.”

The captain said, “Where is she?”

“There she is.”

So the lady’s husband brought her forward. Then he said,

“The Bannocks are all out fighting. They are killing everything and everybody, Indians and whites, and I and two more of my people went with these men out to South Mountain to fight them, and we came on to Buffalo Horn’s camp and had a fight with them, and the scouts ran away and left him to the mercy of Bannocks. I saw that I could not get away when they were all mustered on me, so I jumped off my horse and placed my horse between me and them, and laid my gun over the saddle, and fired at Buffalo Horn as he came galloping up, ahead of his men. He fell from his