Somewhat later, two women from the Solomon were taken captive, one of them being a bride of but four months who had recently come out with her young husband from the State of New York. Custar seized some chiefs and, with noosed lariats dangling before their eyes, bade them send and have those prisoners brought in, or suffer the penalties. Indians have an unconquerable prejudice against being hung, as it prevents their spirits entering the happy hunting grounds, and the captives were promptly sent to Custar's camp. We afterward saw one of them, Mrs. Morgan, on the Solomon. What an agony must have been hers, as she came in sight of her old home, and the memory of her wrongs since leaving it, rose anew before her! But to return to the history of our emigrants. After the murders, Mr. Sydney and his daughters abandoned their farms, and with the same wagon and oxen which two years before had brought the family out from Ohio, they started for the recently discovered mines in New Mexico. The journey was tedious, and, when at length arrived there, he found but little gold, and even less relief from his mighty sorrow. The old home, with its graves, beckoned him back, and thither he was now returning to spend his remaining days, unless, as he laconically stated, some one had "jumped the claim." Lest my readers toward the rising sun should not clearly understand the old gentleman's meaning, I ought perhaps to explain that, under existing laws, a "Homesteader" can not be absent from his land over six months at any time, without forfeiting his title, and rendering it liable to occupancy by other parties. It was already two days over the allotted period, he said. But the oxen were thin, and he finally decided to rest with us until the next morning, and then push forward. Flora, the younger daughter, was a blooming Western girl of a thoroughly practical turn, and a counselor on whose advice the father and sister evidently relied greatly. The Professor assured me confidentially that evening, and with much more than his wonted enthusiasm on such a subject, that she preferred the language of the rocks to that of fashion plates. She had even disputed one of his statements, he said, and vanquished him by producing the proof from a well-worn scientific work--one of a dozen books carefully wrapped up and stowed away with other goods in the wagon. A novel accomplishment which the young lady possessed was that of being an excellent rifle shot, and it afforded us all considerable merriment when she challenged Muggs to a trial of skill, and, producing a target rifle, utterly defeated him. Such a woman as that, the Professor said, was safe on the frontier; she could fight her own way and clear her vicinity of savages, whenever necessary, as well as any of us.