nd that
her mother was found under a walnut-tree with a bullet through her body.
I immediately sent Indian scouts to take the trail. They found the
tracks of a mare and colt going by the spot, and thinking it would bring
them to the girl, they followed it. Shortly they found a moccasin track
where a man had dismounted from the mare, and without paying more
attention to the horse track, they followed it. They ran down one of my
own scouts in a _tiswin_ [An intoxicating beverage made of corn] camp,
where he was carousing with other drinkers. They sprang on him, got him
by the hair, disarmed and bound him. Then they asked him what he had
done with the girl, and why he had killed the mother, to which he
replied that 'he did not know.' When he was brought to me, about dark,
there was intense excitement among the Indians, who crowded around
demanding Indian justice on the head of the murderer and ravisher of the
women. In order to save his life I took him from the Indians and lodged
him in the post guard-house. On the following morning, in order to
satisfy myself positively that this man had committed the murder, I sent
my first sergeant, the famous Mickey Free, with a picked party of
trailers, back to the walnut-tree, with orders to go carefully over the
trail and run down the mare and colt, or find the girl, dead or alive,
wherever they might.

[Illustration: 27 NATASTALE]

"In two hours word was sent to me that the trail was running to the
north. They had found the body of the colt with its throat cut, and were
following the mare. The trail showed that a man afoot was driving the
mare, and the scouts thought the girl was on the mare. This proved that
we had the wrong man in custody. I therefore turned him loose, telling
him he was all right. In return he told me that he owned the mare and
colt, and that when he passed the tree the girl was up in its branches,
shaking down nuts which her old mother was gathering. He had ridden
along, and about an hour afterwards had heard a shot. He turned his mare
loose, and proceeded on foot to the _tiswin_ camp, where he heard later
that the old woman had been shot and the girl 'lifted.' When arrested,
he knew that the other scouts had trailed him from the walnut-tree; he
saw the circumstances against him, and was afraid.

"On the night of the second day Mickey Free's party returned, having run
the trail to within a few hundred yards of the camp of Alcashay in the
Forestdale country,