At no post, I am fain to confess, have I seen a larger number of mementos of Indian hostility than at this fort. And the negroes had all the more cause to dread attacks from the Indians, as they had been accosted the first time they went out--a fatigue-party, to cut wood--by an Indian chief, who told them that he was their brother, and that it was their duty to come and join his band against their common enemy, the white man. The black braves refused, returning to the post without their load of wood; and since that time no fatigue-party ever returned that did not bring back at least one of their number dead or wounded. The last thing we did before leaving this post was to stop at the large basin of water, Cook's Spring, there to drink, and let the animals drink, a last draught of the pure, clear flood. How many a heart had this spring gladdened, when its sight broke on the longing eyes of the emigrant, before human habitations were ever to be found here! Just at the foot of the rough, endless mountain, the men who had come under protection of our train from Fort Cummings pointed out where the two mail-riders coming from Camp Bayard--our destination--had been ambushed and killed by the Indians only the week before. I had heard of these two men while at the Fort, one of whom, a young man hardly twenty, seemed to have an unusually large number of friends among men of all classes and grades. When smoking his farewell pipe before mounting his mule for the trip to Camp Bayard, he said: "Boys, this is my last trip. Mother writes that she is getting old and feeble; she wants me to come home; so I've thrown up my contract with Uncle Sam, and I'm going back to Booneville just as straight as God will let me, when I get back from Bayard. It's hard work and small pay, anyhow--sixty dollars a month, and your scalp at the mercy of the red devils every time you come out." The letter was found in the boy's pocket when the mutilated body was brought in. It was no idle fancy when I thought I could see the ground torn up in one place as from the sudden striking out of horses' hoofs. One of the men confirmed the idea that it was not far from the place where the body had been found. The mule had probably taken the first fright just there, where the rider had evidently received the first arrow, aimed with such deadly skill that he fell in less than two minutes after it struck him.