The Umbiquas retired precipitately with their dead, uttering a yell of disappointment and rage, to which three of our boys, being ordered so to do, responded with a shrill war-whoop of defiance.  This made the Umbiquas quite frantic, but they were now more prudent.  The arrows that had killed their comrades were children-arrows; still there could be no doubt but that they had been shot by warriors.  They retired behind a projecting rock on the bank of the river, only thirty yards in our front, but quite protected from our missiles.  There they formed a council of war, and waited for their men and canoes, which they expected to have arrived long before.  At that moment, the light fog which had been hovering over the river was dispersed, and the other shore became visible, and showed us a sight which arrested our attention.  There, too, the drama of destruction was acting, though on a smaller scale.

Just opposite to us was a canoe, the same in which our two Indians had gone upon their expedition the day before.  The two Umbiquas keeping the stolen horses were a few yards from it; they had apparently discovered it a few minutes before, and were uncertain what course to pursue; they heard both the war-whoop and the yell of their own people, and were not a little puzzled; but as soon as the fog was entirely gone they perceived their party, where they had sheltered themselves, and probably in obedience to some signals from it, they prepared to cross the river.  At the very moment they were untying the canoe, there was a flash and two sharp reports; the Indians fell down—­they were dead.  Our two scouts, who were concealed behind some bushes, then appeared, and began coolly to take the scalps, regardless of a shower of arrows from the yelling and disappointed Umbiquas.  Nor was this all:  in their rage and anxiety, our enemies had exposed themselves beyond the protection of the rock; they presented a fair mark, and just as the chief was looking behind him to see if there was any movement to fear from the boat-house, four more of his men fell under our fire.

The horrible yells which followed, I can never describe, although the events of this my first fight are yet fresh in my mind.  The Umbiquas took their dead and turned to the east, in the direction of the mountains, which they believed would be their only means of escaping destruction.  They were now reduced to only ten men, and their appearance was melancholy and dejected.  They felt that they were doomed never more to return to their own home.

We gathered from our scouts opposite that the six warriors of the post had returned from the settlement, and lay somewhere in ambush; this decided us.  Descending by the ladders which the Indians had left behind them, we entered the prairie path, so as to bar their retreat in every direction.

Let me wind up this tale of slaughter.  The Umbiquas fell headlong on the ambush, by which four more of them were killed; the remainder dispersed in the prairie, where they tried in vain to obtain a momentary refuge in the chasms.  Before mid-day they were all destroyed, except one, who escaped by crossing the river.  However, he never saw his home again; for, a long time afterwards, the Umbiquas declared that not one ever returned from that fatal horse-stealing expedition.