an impression that he had not belonged
to our company when it left Arkansas. Also, he had neither wife, nor
family, nor wagon of his own. All he possessed was his horse, his rifle,
the clothes he stood up in, and a couple of blankets that were hauled in
the Mason wagon.

Next morning it was that our doom fell. Two days' journey beyond the
last Mormon outpost, knowing that no Indians were about and apprehending
nothing from the Indians on any count, for the first time we had not
chained our wagons in the solid circle, placed guards on the cattle, nor
set a night-watch.

My awakening was like a nightmare. It came as a sudden blast of sound. I
was only stupidly awake for the first moments and did nothing except to
try to analyze and identify the various noises that went to compose the
blast that continued without let up. I could hear near and distant
explosions of rifles, shouts and curses of men, women screaming, and
children bawling. Then I could make out the thuds and squeals of bullets
that hit wood and iron in the wheels and under-construction of the wagon.
Whoever it was that was shooting, the aim was too low. When I started to
rise, my mother, evidently just in the act of dressing, pressed me down
with her hand. Father, already up and about, at this stage erupted into
the wagon.

"Out of it!" he shouted. "Quick! To the ground!"

He wasted no time. With a hook-like clutch that was almost a blow, so
swift was it, he flung me bodily out of the rear end of the wagon. I had
barely time to crawl out from under when father, mother, and the baby
came down pell-mell where I had been.

"Here, Jesse!" father shouted to me, and I joined him in scooping out
sand behind the shelter of a wagon-wheel. We worked bare-handed and
wildly. Mother joined in.

"Go ahead and make it deeper, Jesse," father ordered,

He stood up and rushed away in the gray light, shouting commands as he
ran. (I had learned by now my surname. I was Jesse Fancher. My father
was Captain Fancher).

"Lie down!" I could hear him. "Get behind the wagon wheels and burrow in
the sand! Family men, get the women and children out of the wagons! Hold
your fire! No more shooting! Hold your fire and be ready for the rush
when it comes! Single men, join Laban at the right, Cochrane at the
left, and me in the centre! Don't stand up! Crawl for it!"

But no rush came. For a quarter of an hour the heavy and irregular
firing continued. Our