Page:Life Among the Piutes.djvu/161

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The Bannock War
157

it is our people going to Camp McDermitt.” It was now about six o’clock in the morning of the fourteenth of June. So we started again and rode as fast as our horses could travel. We had about sixty miles to go to find some white people. We travelled on and found a clock on their trail at a place called Juniper Lake, and we all knew it was the hostile Bannocks we were following. The next thing we found was a fiddle and I took it along with me. About noon I saw something coming down the mountain. “Oh,” said I, “oh, look there! What is it?” ”Oh, it is mountain sheep.” We galloped up towards them. They came close to us and John shot and killed one. We took some of the meat and there I lost my fiddle, and it is there to this day, as I never went back to find it.

As we rode on about five miles from Juniper Lake, we saw some one upon the mountains, as if they were running, so we waved our handkerchiefs at them. There were two of them. As we came nearer to them I said to George, “Call to them.” He did so. I saw them rise to their feet. I waved my handkerchief at them again and one of them called out, “Who are you?” I said, “Your sister, Sarah.” It was Lee Winnemucca, my brother, who had called out. So they jumped on their horses, and came to us, and the minute he rode up he jumped from his horse and took me in his arms and said, “Oh, dear sister, you have come to save us, for we are all prisoners of the Bannocks. They have treated our father most shamefully. They have taken from us what few guns we had, and our blankets, and our horses. They have done this because they outnumber us, and we are all up in the mountains with them Oh, sister, have you brought us some good news? Have you come for us? Oh, dear sister, here I am standing and talking to you, knowing the great danger you are in by coming here, and these men, too. The Ban-