held their council and decided to take his life and property, she rose to her feet and plead for the life of my friend. Of course he could not understand a word she said, but he saw in her face a benevolence and kindness that gave him heart, for he had about despaired of ever living another hour. From the way in which she looked, talked, and gestured, he felt certain that she was assuming his cause, and he in relating the circumstances to me and others said he never saw a greater heroine in the appearance and conduct of any woman in his life. Of course this he had to judge largely of from appearances, as the Indians judge of the white people that I before alluded to. CHAPTER XVI. CROSSING THE PLAINS. Everything worked along smoothly on my westward way, after my adventure with the Indians, until I reached Walnut Creek, at the Big Bend of the Arkansas River. At that point the buffalo, running past my herd of oxen in the night, scattered them, part running with the buffalo and crossing the river where it was very high, it being the season of the year when the channel was full of water, from the melting of the snow in the mountains from which it received its waters. The next morning, as before, at the One Hundred and Ten, I found a portion of my herd missing, but not so many this time as to prevent me from traveling. I had the teams hitched up, some of them being a yoke of oxen minus, but sufficient remained to move the wagons, and I started my assistant, Mr. Samuel Poteet, one of the most faithful of my men, on the road with the teams, and I took my extra man to hunt for the missing oxen. We crossed the river where it was almost at swimming point and at the place where the buffalo had crossed the night before, for we had followed their trail for several miles. After losing the trail, for they had so scattered we could not tell which trail to take, we wandered around for a time in the open prairie, expecting Indians to appear at any moment; but in that we were happily disappointed. I finally found my cattle all standing in a huddle near a pond. We soon surrounded them and started driving them to the river, crossed them and reached the road, following the train, until we overtook it a little before sundown that evening. From that point there was nothing to trouble or disturb our movements until we reached the Wagon Mounds, beyond the borders of New Mexico, now a station upon the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad. There we came upon the ruins of a stage-coach which had been burned; the bones and skeletons of some of the horses that drew it, as well as the bones of the party of ten men who were murdered outright by the Indians. Not one escaped to tell the story, and they were, I think, a party of ten as brave men as could be found anywhere. Whether there were any Indians killed while they were massacring this party is not known, for it was some few days before the news of the affair was known, as there was