avourite chief in a second.

Old Wolf shook his head defiantly in the negative. Hatcher repeated his
order, getting madder all the time: "Send your young men over the hill;
I tell you!" Old Wolf was still stubborn; he shook his head again.
Hatcher gave him another chance: "Send your young men over the hill, I
tell you, or I'll scalp you alive as you are!" Again the chief shook his
head. Then Hatcher, still holding on the hair of his stubborn victim,
commenced to make an incision in the head of Old Wolf, for the
determined man was bound to carry out his threat; but he began very
slowly.

As the chief felt the blood trickle down his forehead, he weakened. He
ordered his next in command to send the young men over the hill and out
of sight. The order was repeated immediately to the warriors, who were
astonished spectators of the strange scene, and they quickly mounted
their horses and rode away over the hill as fast as they could thump
their animals' sides with their legs, leaving only five or six chiefs
with Old Wolf and Hatcher.

Hatcher held on like grim death to the old chief's head, and immediately
ordered his men to throw the robes out of the wagons as quickly as they
could, and get inside themselves. This was promptly obeyed, and when
they were all under the cover of the wagon sheets, Hatcher let go of his
victim's hair, and, with a last kick, told him and his friends that they
could leave. They went off, and did not return.

Some laughable incidents have enlivened the generally sanguinary history
of the Old Santa Fe Trail, but they were very serious at the time to
those who were the actors, and their ludicrousness came after all was
over.

In the late summer of 1866, a thieving band of Apaches came into the
vicinity of Fort Union, New Mexico, and after carefully reconnoitring
the whole region and getting at the manner in which the stock belonging
to the fort was herded, they secreted themselves in the Turkey Mountains
overlooking the entire reservation, and lay in wait for several days,
watching for a favourable moment to make a raid into the valley and
drive off the herd.

Selecting an occasion when the guard was weak and not very alert, they
in broad daylight crawled under the cover of a hill, and, mounting their
horses, dashed out with the most unearthly yells and down among the
animals that were quietly grazing close to the fort, which terrified
these so greatly that they broke away from the herders, and