[Footnote 22:  It may appear singular to the reader that the Comanches, being always at war with the Texans, should not have immediately attacked the party under the orders of Hunt.  But we were merely a hunting-party; that is to say, our band was composed chiefly of young hunters, not yet warriors.  On such occasions there is frequently, though not always, an ancient warrior for every eight hunters, just to show to them the crafts of Indian mode of hunting.  These parties often bring with them their squaws and children, and never fight but when obliged to do so.]

The next morning I received a visit from Hunt and two or three inferior officers, to advise upon the following subject.  An agricultural company from Kentucky had obtained from the Texan government a grant of lands on the upper forks of the Trinity.  There twenty-five or thirty families had settled, and they had with them numerous cattle, horses, mules, and donkeys of a very superior breed.  On the very evening I met with the Texan rangers, the settlement had been visited by a party of ruffians, who stole everything, murdering sixty or seventy men, women and children, and firing all the cottages and log-houses of this rising and prosperous village.  All the corpses were shockingly mangled and scalped, and as the assailants were painted in the Indian fashion, the few inhabitants who had escaped and gained the Texan camp declared that the marauders were Comanches.

This I denied stoutly, as did the Comanche party, and we all proceeded with the Texan force to Lewisburg, the site of the massacre.  As soon as I viewed the bodies, lying here and there, I at once was positive that the deed had been committed by white men.  The Comanche chief could scarcely restrain his indignation; he rode close to Captain Hunt and sternly said to him—­

“Stoop, Pale-face of a Texan, and look with thy eyes open; be honest if thou canst, and confess that thou knowest by thine own experience that this deed is that of white men.  What Comanche ever scalped women and children?  Stoop, I say, and behold—­a shame on thy colour and race—­a race of wolves, preying upon each other; a race of jaguars, killing the female after having forced her—­stoop and see.

“The bodies of the young women have been atrociously and cowardly abused—­seest thou?  Thou well knowest the Indian is too noble and too proud to level himself to the rank of a Texan or of a brute.”

Twenty of our Comanches started on the tracks, and in the evening brought three prisoners to the camp.  They were desperate blackguards, well known to every one of the soldiers under Captain Hunt, who, in spite of their Indian disguise, identified them immediately.  Hunt refused to punish them, or to make any further pursuit, under the plea that he had received orders to act against Indian depredators, but not against white men.

“If such is the case,” interrupted the Comanche chief, “retire immediately with thy men, even to-night, or the breeze of evening will repeat thy words to my young men, who would give a lesson of justice to the Texans.  Away with thee, if thou valuest thy scalp:  justice shall be done by Indians; it is time they should take it into their own hands, when Pale-faces are afraid of each other.”