Old Jim Lane saw my hesitation, and taking up the braid, said to me: “My boy, does it make you sick?” Then inserting the point of the knife under the skin, he cut around, took up the other braid, and jerked the scalp from the head. I had been about three years in that country and four years in America, and life on the plains under such hardships as I had undergone hardens the sensibility, yet I was not quite ripe for such a cutting affray, even with a dead Indian. After this we were not molested, but devoted our time to looking around for something to eat besides the rotten horse and mule meat, which we boiled several times in water and powder, not to get it soft, but to boil out the stench as much as possible. We found some cactus fruit, and killed a coyote, of which the brains and a rib were my portion. Aside from this we had nothing but horse and mule during the siege, which soon told on our bowels; but in spite of all this, I do not remember a despondent man in our crowd. One morning, being the ninth since we were attacked, I was lying outside of my pit, having done some guard duty during the night; I was half dozing and dreaming of home and a good meal. I felt so homesick and so hungry when I heard some one call attention to something moving on the hill. I was all attention at once. Soon I heard again “I think that’s Doctor Fitzgerald’s greyhound.” Whoever it might be, we would welcome. We would even have been pleased to have the Indians attack us again, in hopes of killing one of their horses for fresh meat; but it was soon evident that help was coming, and when I fully realized this fact, enfeebled as I was, I jumped up and joined in a lunatics’ dance that was in progress all around us. Those on the hill must have seen us, for there was a rush of horsemen down the hill toward us, followed by one or two ambulance wagons. They were as eager to reach us as we were to greet them, and as I ran uphill I noticed a soldier on a white horse coming full tilt. The momentum carried him past me, but in passing I grabbed his saddle-bag and was taken off my feet, but it would have taken more than one horse to drag me from my hold. I suspected some eatables in there, and as soon as he could stop, without dismounting he assisted me to open that bag. With both hands I dived in, and with each hand I clutched some hardtack, but only one hand could reach my mouth; my other was in the grip of one of our men, who ravenously snatched the “tacks.” We ate, cried, laughed, and ate, all in a breath.