Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/164

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
116
FIGHTING CAUTIOUSLY.

White Bird's wick-i-up and found him sitting there, bloody from head to foot, with a huge cut on one cheek, another on one side of the head, and numerous other wounds, making him the most horrible specimen of humanity that I had ever seen living. He had not even washed the blood from his face or hands, but was sitting there telling his squaw and children how many Utes he had killed during the day, apparently as cool and unconcerned as though nothing had happened him. But he was not able for duty the next day, and died about ten o'clock.

We never learned where the Indians buried their dead, for they took them away during the night and disposed of them in some manner.

There were more Indians killed and wounded the second day than the first, and that night the Comanches had a big war-dance over the scalps they had taken.

The morning of the third day each tribe marched down at about the usual hour and resumed their positions in the line of battle, and that morning they fought more cautiously than before, until about ten o'clock, when the Utes made their first big charge on the Comanches, and they had a hard fight, which resulted in the death of many Indians, and the Utes retreated with considerably the worst of it.

In this charge we counted over forty Utes that were killed and scalped.

After the Comanches had driven the Utes back, Johnnie West and I went down within about fifty yards and sat there until the war was ended. About the middle of the afternoon of the third day, the old war-chief