We lost no time, allow me to assure you, in “getting out of there.”  A quarter of a mile above us, and about the same distance from the timber line on every side, were three jagged peaks, and not more than twenty yards apart.  Here I stationed the men, first dismounting them and securing our horses among the rocks so as to shield them from the bullets of the Indians.  I felt sure that we were going to have a fight, and against heavy odds.  But the rocks made a splendid fort, and I explained to the men that if they would save their ammunition and not get excited we could stand off all the Indians west of the Rocky mountains.  After talking to them I took two men, Charley Long and a young man named Armstrong, two of the best shots in the company, and crawled down through the grass about 150 yards to another pile of rocks.  I calculated that if I did not hold that point the Indians could unseen reach it and pour a deadly fire into our position above.  Besides I had hopes of getting some of them when they came to the edge of the timber.  We had reached the position but a few minutes when two rode out of the timber to our left and about 400 yards away.  The boys wanted to fire, but I held them back telling them that we would get surer shots by not disclosing our position.  We could see them watching the men in the rocks above, and soon they turned and rode straight towards us, all the while watching the men in the rocks.  When within 100, yards I told the men to take deliberate aim and we would fire together.  I pulled on the trigger of my needle gun until I could feel it give.  But something told me not to fire and I told the men to wait.  On they came, and again we drew deadly beads on the unsuspecting horsemen, but there was an undefinable something that told me not to fire.  When they had come within thirty yards we discovered they were white men.  We rose up out of the rocks and grass and when they came up I discovered that one of them was an old friend, Warren Cassner, from John Day Valley.  We also discovered for the first time that the sun was in total eclipse.  Everything looked dark, and they had taken us for Indians and we had came within a hairs breadth of sending them into eternity under the same false impression.  When I saw how near I had come to killing my friend I was all in a tremble.

The two men belonged to a company of 125 men raised in John Day Valley and Canyon City and were pursuing a large band of Indians that had come in the night before.  They made a trail as broad as a wagon road and evidently numbered a hundred or more warriors.  Joined with those we had been watching they constituted quite a force and would evidently put up a stiff fight.  We returned with the John Day men to the Stewart ranch, and Gen. Brown having arrived during the day, our forces numbered full 250 men, and all full of fight.  That night plans were discussed for the coming attack.  I favored dividing our forces and attacking them from both sides of the canyon.  In this, however, I