Wheeling about, I saw that the other man, hearing the fall, had turned, his hand upon his revolver. It was no time for argument. I fired and killed him. Then, leaping on my horse, I dug the spurs into his sides, and back down the trail we went, over the rocks and rough ground toward safety. [Illustration: IT WAS NO TIME FOR ARGUMENT. I FIRED, AND KILLED HIM] My peril was far from past. At the sound of the shot the six men in the dugout tumbled forth in hot haste. They stopped an instant at the scene of the shooting, possibly to revive the man I had stunned and to learn from him what had happened. They were too wise to mount their horses, knowing that, afoot, they could make better time over the rocky country than I could on horseback. Steadily I heard them gaining, and soon made up my mind that if I was to evade them at all I must abandon my horse. Jumping off, I gave him a smart slap with the butt of my revolver which sent him down the valley. I turned and began to scramble up the mountainside. I had climbed hardly forty feet when I heard them pass, following the sound of my horse's feet. I dodged behind a tree as they went by, and when I heard them firing farther down the trail I worked my way up the mountainside. It was twenty-five miles to Horseshoe Station, and very hard traveling the first part of the way. But I got to the station, just before daylight, weary and footsore, but exceedingly thankful. Tired as I was, I woke up the men at the station and told them of my adventure. Slade himself led the party that set out to capture my former hosts, and I went along, though nearly beat out. Twenty of us, after a brisk ride, reached the dugout at ten o'clock in the morning. But the thieves had gone. We found a newly made grave where they had buried the man I had to kill, and a trail leading southwest toward Denver. That was all. But my adventure at least resulted in clearing the country of horse-thieves. Once the gang had gone, no more depredations occurred for a long time. After a year's absence from home I began to long to see my mother and sisters again. In June, 1861, I got a pass over the stage-line, and returned to Leavenworth. The first rumblings of the great struggle that was soon to be known as the Civil War were already reverberating throughout the North; Sumter had been fired upon in April of that year. Kansas, as every schoolboy knows, was previously the bloody scene of some of the earliest conflicts. My mother's sympathies were strongly with the Union. She knew that war was bound to come, but so confident was she in the strength of the Federal Government that she devoutly believed that the struggle could not last longer than six months at the utmost.