hanged shots, the chief sinking on one knee and
aiming his gun, Bell throwing his body forward and making his horse
rear. Both lines, by command, fired, following the example of their
superiors, the troopers, however, spurring forward over their enemies.
The warriors, or nearly all of them, threw themselves on the ground, and
several vertical wounds were received by horse and rider. The dragoons
turned short about, and again charged through and over their enemies,
the fire being continuous. As they turned for a third charge, the
surviving Indians were seen escaping to a deep ravine, which, although
only one or two hundred paces off, had not previously been noticed. A
number of the savages thus escaped, the troopers having to pull up at
the brink, but sending a volley after the descending fugitives.

In less than fifteen minutes twenty-one of the forty-six actors in this
strange combat were slain or disabled. Bell was not hit, but four or
five of his men were killed or wounded. He had shot White Wolf several
times, and so did others after him; but so tenacious of life was the
Apache that, to finish him, a trooper got a great stone and mashed his
head.

This was undoubtedly the greatest duel of modern times; certainly
nothing like it ever occurred on the Santa Fe Trail before or since.

The war chief of the Kiowa nation in the early '50's was Satank, a most
unmitigated villain; cruel and heartless as any savage that ever robbed
a stage-coach or wrenched off the hair of a helpless woman. After
serving a dozen or more years with a record for hellish atrocities
equalled by few of his compeers, he was deposed for alleged cowardice,
as his warriors claimed, under the following circumstances:--

The village of his tribe was established in the large bottoms, eight
miles from the Great Bend of the Arkansas, and about the same distance
from Fort Zarah.[33] All the bucks were absent on a hunting expedition,
excepting Satank and a few superannuated warriors. The troops were out
from Fort Larned on a grand scout after marauding savages, when they
suddenly came across the village and completely took the Kiowas by
surprise. Seeing the soldiers almost upon them, Satank and other
warriors jumped on their ponies and made good their escape. Had they
remained, all of them would have been killed or at least captured;
consequently Satank, thinking discretion better than valour at that
particular juncture, incontinently fled. His warriors i