SASTER OVERTAKES THE WOOD FAMILY.

Our consolidated train continued its creeping pace down the meandering
Humboldt; crossing the stream occasionally, to gain the advantage of a
shorter or better road.

Soon again there were other proofs of the wisdom we had shown in
taking every possible precaution against attack.

Next ahead of us was a family from England, a Mr. Wood, his wife and
one child, with two men employed as drivers. They were outfitted with
three vehicles, two of them drawn by ox teams, in charge of the hired
men, and a lighter, spring-wagon, drawn by four mules, the family
conveyance, driven by Mr. Wood. We had not known them before.

One very hot day in the latter part of August, after having moved
along for a time with no train in sight ahead of us, we came upon Mr.
Wood in a most pitiable plight, the result of an attack and slaughter,
not differing greatly from the Holloway case, and its parallel in
atrocity.

Mr. Wood's party had spent the preceding night undisturbed, and were
up early in the morning, preparing to resume their journey. The ox
teams had been made ready and moved on, while Mr. Wood proceeded in a
leisurely way with harnessing the four mules and attaching them to the
smaller wagon. All the articles of their equipment had been gathered
up and placed in proper order in the wagon.

When Mr. Wood had nearly completed hitching the team, Mrs. Wood and
the baby being already in the wagon, some men, apparently all Indians,
twenty or more of them, were seen coming on horseback, galloping
rapidly from the hills to the northward, about half a mile away.

Mr. Wood, fearing that he and his family were about to be attacked, in
this lonely situation, hurriedly sprang to the wagon seat and whipped
up the mules, hoping that before the attack they could come within
sight of the ox wagons, which had rounded the point of a hill but a
few minutes before, and have such aid as his hired men could give.

He had no more than got the team under way when a wheel came off the
wagon--he having probably overlooked replacing the nut after oiling
the axle. Notwithstanding this he lost no time in making the best of
the circumstances. Jumping to the ground, he hurriedly placed Mrs.
Wood on one of the mules, cutting the harness to release the animal
from the wagon; then, with the baby in his arms, he mounted another
mule, and they started flight.

But the Indians had by this time come within gun-shot range and fi