the spell.

"I feel like a fool," exclaimed Van Diveer.

"But," spoke Drennan, the older and more conservative leader of their
party, "we couldn't start an open battle with those fellows without
some of us being killed. They are gone; we should be glad that they
are. It is better to bear the insult than have even one of our people
shot."

"I'm glad they left no bullets in me--
Ulee, ilee, aloo, ee;
Courting, down in Tennessee."

This paraphrasing of his favorite ditty was, of course, perpetrated by
"Jack."

But we all wished we knew. Was it true that these men were
conspirators with the Indians who had been ravaging the emigrant
trains? If so, doubtless they would be concerned in other and
possibly much more disastrous assaults, and perhaps soon. If so, who
would be the next victims?

But Mr. Wood was still too indefinite in his identification of the man
Tooly--at least in his statement of it--to clear away all doubt, or
even, as yet, to induce the majority of our men to act on the judgment
of some: that we should follow these plainsmen, learn more, and have
it out with them.

There were many circumstances pointing not only to the connection of
these men with the assault on Mr. Wood's family, but to the
probability of their having been responsible for the slaughter of the
Holloway party. It seemed improbable that there were two bands of
Indians operating along that part of the Humboldt River in the looting
of emigrant trains. If it could be proved that white men co-operated
with the savages in the Wood case, the inference would be strong that
the same white men had been accessories in the Holloway massacre. The
use of guns in those attacks, and the evident abundance of ammunition
in the hands of the Indians, went far toward proving the connection of
white men with both these cases.

CHAPTER XI.

SAGEBRUSH JUSTICE.

The Sink of the Humboldt is a lake of strong, brackish water, where
the river empties into the natural basin, formed by the slant of the
surrounding district of mountains, plain and desert, and where some of
the water sinks into the ground and much of it evaporates, there being
no surface outlet. In the latter part of the summer the water is at a
very low stage, and stronger in mineral constituents. There we found
the daytime heat most intense.

The land that is exposed by the receding water during the hottest
period of the fall season becomes a dry, crackling waste of