y unexpectedly
met the scout of the Missouri column, Bill Jackson, who had passed the
Wingate train by a cut-off of his own on a solitary ride ahead for sake
of information. He was at a gallop now, and what he said sent them all
back at full speed to the head of the Wingate column.

Jackson riding ahead, came up with his hand raised for a halt.

"My God, Cap'n, stop the train!" he called. "Hit won't do for the womern
and children to see what's on ahead yan!"

"What's up--where?" demanded Wingate.

"On three mile, on the water where they camped night afore last. Thar
they air ten men, an' the rest's gone. Woodhull's wagons, but he ain't
thar. Wagons burned, mules standing with arrers in them, rest all dead
but a few. Hit's the Pawnees!"

The column leaders all galloped forward, seeing first what later most
of the entire train saw--the abominable phenomena of Indian warfare on
the Plains.

Scattered over a quarter of a mile, where the wagons had stood not
grouped and perhaps not guarded, lay heaps of wreckage beside heaps of
ashes. One by one the corpses were picked out, here, there, over more
than a mile of ground. They had fought, yes, but fought each his own
losing individual battle after what had been a night surprise.

The swollen and blackened features of the dead men stared up, mutilated
as savages alone mark the fallen. Two were staked out, hand and foot,
and ashes lay near them, upon them. Arrows stood up between the ribs of
the dead men, driven through and down into the ground. A dozen mules, as
Jackson had said, drooped with low heads and hanging ears, arrow shafts
standing out of their paunches, waiting for death to end their agony.

"Finish them, Jackson."

Wingate handed the hunter his own revolver, signaling for Kelsey and
Hall to do the same. The methodical cracking of the hand arms began to
end the suffering of the animals.

They searched for scraps of clothing to cover the faces of the dead, the
bodies of some dead. They motioned the women and children back when the
head of the train came up. Jackson beckoned the leaders to the side of
one wagon, partially burned.

"Look," said he, pointing.

A long stick, once a whipstock, rose from the front of the wagon bed. It
had been sharpened and thrust under the wrist skin of a human hand--a
dried hand, not of a white man, but a red. A half-corroded bracelet of
copper still clung to the wrist.

"If I read signs right, that's why!" commented Bill J