Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/311

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RETURN PROPERTY.
239

While I was telling him where and how we came in possession of them, George Jones took the five Indian scalps from the pack and said:

"And there is something else we got at the same time we got the horses."

Then he took the two white men's scalps from the pack, also the two rifles, and they were also satisfied that the scalps were the scalps of the two white men who had been herding this same band of horses and mules, for the hair was similar in color to that of the two herders. One of them had dark brown hair and the other one had rather light hair.

From this company of men we learned that near us there was a mining camp, the stock belonged to the miners, and that the two men killed had been herding the horses and mules about three miles away from camp. This was a new camp called Greenhorn Gulch.

The herders always brought the horses to camp every night, but the last two nights they had failed to bring the stock in, and this man McConnell had raised the crowd to hunt the stock, being satisfied that the two herders were killed and the stock driven away by the Indians.

After giving them a brief outline of our little fight with the Indians, our business there, etc., McConnell asked us how much the miners would have to pay us for our trouble. I told him that we did not make any charge, but that if the miners felt that it was worth anything to them to have their horses brought back, they could pay us just what they felt like giving. McConnell said for us to ride back to camp with them and he would call a