on us--there to our right lay a dead mule,
harnessed for work, but with throat cut; while directly in front of the
cabin door was a dog, an ugly, massive brute, his mouth open, prone on
his back, with stiffened legs pointing to the sky. I dropped my rein,
and strode forward.

"Wait where you are," I called back. "There have been savages here;
let me see first what has happened inside."

The dog had been shot, stricken by two bullets, and I was obliged to
drag his huge body to one side before I could press my way in through
the door. The open doorway and window afforded ample light, and a
single glance was sufficient to reveal most of the story. It was a
well-built cabin, recently erected, with hip roof and puncheon floor,
the inside of the logs peeled, and white-washed. It had a homelike
look, the few scattered articles of furniture rudely but skillfully
made. A bit of chintz fluttered at the window, and a flower in a can
bloomed on the sill. The table had been smashed as by the blow of an
axe, and pewter dishes were everywhere. The bed in one corner had been
stripped of its coverlets, many of them slashed by a knife, and the
straw tick had been ripped open in a dozen places. Coals from the
fireplace lay widespread, some of them having eaten deeply into the
hard wood before they ceased smouldering.

I saw all this, yet my eyes rested upon something else. A man lay,
bent double across an overturned bench, in a posture which hid his face
from view. His body was there alone, although a child's shoe lay on
the floor, and a woman's linsey dress dangled from a hook against the
wall. I crept forward, my heart pounding madly, until I could gain
sight of his face. He was a big fellow, not more than thirty, with
sandy hair and beard, and a pugnacious jaw, his coarse hickory shirt
slashed into ribbons, a bullet wound in the center of his forehead, and
one arm broken by a vicious blow. His calloused hands yet gripped the
haft of an axe, just as he had died--fighting.

The sight of the man lying in that posture of horror was so terrible
that I instantly grasped the body, dragging it from off the overturned
bench, and seeking to give it a resting place on the floor. But it was
already stiffened in death, and I could only throw over it a blanket to
hide the sight. Tim's voice spoke from the doorway.

"Injuns, I reckon?"

"Yes, they have been here; the man is dead. But there must have been
others, a woman and ch