Buckskin Mose: Or, Life From the Lakes to the Pacific, as Actor, Circus-Rider, Detective, Ranger, Gold-Digger, Indian Scout, and Guide.Perrie, George W.
History
Buckskin Mose: Or, Life From the Lakes to the Pacific, as Actor, Circus-Rider, Detective, Ranger, Gold-Digger, Indian Scout, and Guide.
Perrie, George W.
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; Latter Day Saints -- Fiction; Western stories
Harry and myself had not dismounted. He was a capital horseman, and rode
in Comanche style, better even than I did. It was in this fashion that
he approached an old Indian who was literally hailing his arrows at us,
and shot him from under the neck of his horse. Ridding his hand of the
revolver which was attached to his wrist by a strap, he rushed the
animal past his prostrate enemy, and took his scalp very neatly, almost
at the same instant recovering his seat.
The red-skin, however, although dropped by Arnold's shot, very evidently
disapproved of the loss of his hair. Raising himself from the ground,
precisely at the moment when the former reappeared above the back of his
horse, he let fly another arrow.
This struck Harry in the back of the neck, immediately behind the
vertebral bones, passing directly through it for more than half its
length.
No time was given the Indian for another shot, as I was sufficiently
near to settle him.
"I say, Mose! lend me a hand."
On looking round, I could not forbear laughing. The manner in which the
arrow had passed through Arnold's neck compelled him to protrude his
head in front of him in such a strangely quaint fashion. Mirth would
have been compulsory, even in one at the point of death.
Of course, while laughing, I had pulled out the unpleasant addition to
his muscular anatomy.
Upon counting the bodies of the dead, we found seventeen. The remainder
of the party had managed to effect an escape.
After this we returned to the mouth of the gorge, where we did not find
Captain Knight and the blue-coats waiting for us. We felt considerably
mortified by the fact, that although the slain red-skins might have been
a portion of Smoke-creek Sam's band, he himself was, as decidedly, not
amongst them.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] These stones are ranged in a circle or semicircle, to indicate the
quarter of the moon. Within these, the number of fragments of rock
calendars the number of days from it. Other signs tell whether these
indications are left by a war or hunting party, and how many of them
there are. There are, besides, other marks, which tell whether the deer
is in the velvet and all the changes it is subject to, which are
invaluable to the hunter who is able to read them.
CHAPTER XIV.
ANOTHER ATTEMPT AT A HONEY-MOON--LEARNING AND LOVING--TWO
UNEXPECTED RECRUITS--PLENTY OF WORK TO DO--A FEW OF THE
SAINTS--WHAT A PITY HE IS NOT AN INDIAN--SIGHTING THE ENEMY--
FREEZING WEATHER--SOME CLEVER GENERALSHIP--THE FIGHT IN THE RIVER--
A NARROW ESCAPE--DESTROYING SUPPLIES--A LITTLE MINING--HOME AGAIN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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