My estimate of the distance agreed with theirs, and upon our reaching the camp, the Rangers immediately took to their saddles, and Captain Smith ordered his men to mount. While they were doing this the red-skin addressed me, saying: "Give Shoshonee John a gun, to help shoot heap Pah-utes." "How do I know you will?" The question was prompted by the knowledge I had acquired of the Indian character. It seemed to me that if the petitioner had owned a gun at the time about which he first joined us, he might, not improbably, have kept out of our neighborhood. He, however, answered me promptly enough. "Pah-ute Ingin heap shoot Shoshonee John when catch him. Shoshonee John shoot him, too." It might be so. But Harry Arnold and Ben Painter took the same view of the case as I did, and the matter was compromised by Captain Smith ordering him to be given a cavalry sabre. At the same time, Brighton Bill, who had been listening, growled out: "'E's ha convarted red devil. Hi'm blamed hif H'i wouldn't 'a given 'im a rifle." When within a mile or something more of the camp, a halt was ordered, while some of us made a reconnoissance. Creeping up to their position, we found the band must count heavily. It had encamped on the very edge of the desert, which was here some forty miles across, without a single bush or shrub growing upon it. It formed almost a dead level, and in the dry season was so hard that a horse would scarcely leave the slightest track by which scout or red-skin could have trailed it. CHAPTER XIX. A LIVELY COMMENCEMENT--THE FIGHT IN THE DESERT--EXTERMINATION OF A BAND OF CUT-THROATS--THE CAVALRY SABRE--A CONTRAST--PERMITTED TO RETIRE AND RECEIVING PROMOTION--A LITTLE LOVE--CHANCE AND TROUBLE--WHAT CAME OF IT--"SMOKING OUT A VARMINT"--A FEW PRISONERS--THE INDIAN AGENT--NEW FRUIT ON A TREE--ALONE ON A TRAIL--THE END. After a brief council, in which Captain Smith, Harry Arnold, and myself were the principal ones who took a part, it was determined to surround them on the side where we then were, and immediately day had broken, to drive them to the desert. By doing this, we calculated scarcely one of them would have a chance of escaping. "At last, Mose!" said Le Roy, who happened to be near me, "we have the blood-thirsty devils! and may God not spare me, if I fail to kill, while a single one of them is left alive." He scarcely seemed to be aware of the meaning of his muttered words. But I knew of what he was thinking. It was of the death of Al. Simmons.