d the Apache
village, we would have lost our horses, if not our lives, for turning
off through the sunflowers would have been an impossibility.

The very next morning, I think it was, one of the government mules
wandered away, and two of the drivers went in search of it, but not
finding it in the post, one of the men suggested that they should go
to the river where the post animals are watered. It is a fork of the
Canadian River, and is just over a little sand hill, not one quarter of
a mile back of the quarters, but not in the direction of the sunflower
road. The other man, however, said he would not go--that it was not
safe--and came back to the corral, so the one who proposed going went on
alone.

Time passed and the man did not return, and finally a detail was sent
out to look him up. They went directly to the river, and there they
found him, just on the other side of the hill--dead. He had been shot
by some fiendish Indian soon after leaving his companion. The mule has
never been found, and is probably in a far-away Indian village, where
he brays in vain for the big rations of corn he used to get at the
government corral.

Last Monday, soon after luncheon, forty or fifty Indians came rushing
down the drive in front of the officers' quarters, frightening some of
us almost out of our senses. Where they came from no one could tell, for
not one sentry had seen them until they were near the post. They rode
past the houses like mad creatures, and on out to the company gardens,
where they made their ponies trample and destroy every growing thing.
Only a few vegetables will mature in this soil and climate, but melons
are often very good, and this season the gardeners had taken much pains
with a crop of fine watermelons that were just beginning to ripen. But
not one of these was spared--every one was broken and crushed by the
little hoofs of the ponies, which seem to enjoy viciousness of this kind
as much as the Indians themselves.

A company of infantry was sent at once to the gardens, but as it was not
quite possible for the men to outrun the ponies, the mischief had been
done before they got there, and all they could do was to force them back
at the point of the bayonet. Cavalry was ordered out, also, to drive
them away, but none of the troops were allowed to fire upon them, and
that the Indians knew very well. It might have brought on an uprising!

It seems that the Indians were almost all young bucks out for a fro