“No one can imagine my surprise and mortification when I was called and told that the Indian camp was entirely deserted, and that none were to be seen except the one asleep by our camp fire. My indifference to placing a guard over the Indian camp will probably always be a mystery to me, but it most likely saved our lives, for if we had attempted to restrain them, and you know us well enough to believe we would not have let them off without a fight; they would probably have pretty well used us up. As it was, we did not give them up without an effort. We saddled our horses and started in chase, thinking that as while with us, their women and children would retard their progress, and that we would soon overtake them. We took the young brave with us, who had slept by our fire. He knew nothing of the departure of his people, and was very much alarmed, as he expected we would at once kill him. I tried to make him useful in following their trail; he by signs, gave me to understand he did not know where they had gone, and seemed unwilling to take the trail when I pointed it out to him. He evidently meant to escape the first opportunity. I kept him near me and treated him kindly, but gave him to understand I should shoot him if he tried to leave me. “We pursued until the trail showed that they had scattered in every direction in the brushy ravines and on the rocky side of a mountain covered with undergrowth, where we could not follow them with our animals. Chagrined and disgusted with myself for my negligence, and my inability to recover any part of my charge, and considering farther pursuit useless, we turned about and took the trail to head-quarters with our one captive.” Major Savage took the youngster under his charge, and flattered him by his conversations and kindly treatment. The Commissioners lionized him somewhat; he was gaily clothed and ornamented, loaded with presents for his own family relations, and was given his liberty and permitted to leave camp at his leisure, and thus departed the last of the “grand caravan” of some three hundred and fifty “captives,” men, women and children, which we had collected and escorted from the mountains. The sight of the one hundred brought to them by Captain Dill, and his report that we were coming with about three hundred and fifty more, aroused sanguine hopes in the commission that the war was over, and that their plans had been successful. “Now that the _prisoners_ have fled,” we asked, “What will be done?”