I told him further that if the Indians attacked us that night he and the two young chiefs would be killed. I told him that he could control the Indians, and that we required him to do it. All of this was said to him in a most positive and emphatic manner, and he communicated it to the younger chiefs. I asked him what so many Indians, all armed, had come away from their villages and to the boundary of their country for? He said the Indians had no bad feelings towards the horse-train, but they had come to make the cow-train pay for the killed and wounded in the fight at Loup Fork. He said that they did not expect to find us with the cowtrain. Certain it is, that every circumstance pointed to the conclusion that had not our train been present, the Hopkins train would have been compelled to contribute largely, or would have had another fight more disastrous, perhaps, than the first. The night was made hideous by the almost constant yelling of the Indians. I remained up until eleven, when I retired, worn out and with an acute attack of neuralgic head-ache. After a time I slept or dozed, notwithstanding the uproar. The doctor also had gone to his wagon. The first lieutenant was in command. About three o'clock he came to my wagon, and requested me to get up; he feared, he said, an attack. The Indians, he informed me, were already approaching us. I found that the warriors had left the strip of timber on the river and were within one hundred yards of our picket-line. I went around the camp and found nearly everyone awake and up. I then went with the lame chief and his guard to the picket-line. I told him to tell the Indians, that they must not come any nearer. The chief began to speak immediately and continued to talk for two minutes or more; and while we did not understand what he said, the tumult ceased, and from thence on, comparative quiet prevailed. In the morning we gave our hostages a good breakfast and presented them with a cow brute so lame that it could not travel farther. I saw it killed. An Indian with a strong, and to me almost inflexible bow, threw himself on his back, holding the steel or iron-pointed arrow with both hands against the string of the bow, and with his feet springing it sent the arrow deep into the heart of the animal, which fell at his feet. This was the first exhibition I had ever seen of the power of the bow as a weapon and life-extinguisher. At short range, with a cool nerve, with a full quiver, a person thus armed would be a dangerous foe.