“For my second place of concealment I chose what seemed in the darkness a narrow canon leading through a range of rocky hills.  It contained many large bowlders, detached from the slopes of the hills.  Behind one of these, in a clump of sage-brush, I made my bed for the day, and soon fell asleep.  It seemed as if I had hardly closed my eyes, though in fact it was near midday, when I was awakened by the report of a rifle, the bullet striking the bowlder just above my body.  A band of Indians had trailed me and had me nearly surrounded; the shot had been fired with an execrable aim by a fellow who had caught sight of me from the hillside above.  The smoke of his rifle betrayed him, and I was no sooner on my feet than he was off his and rolling down the declivity.  Then I ran in a stooping posture, dodging among the clumps of sage-brush in a storm of bullets from invisible enemies.  The rascals did not rise and pursue, which I thought rather queer, for they must have known by my trail that they had to deal with only one man.  The reason for their inaction was soon made clear.  I had not gone a hundred yards before I reached the limit of my run—­the head of the gulch which I had mistaken for a canon.  It terminated in a concave breast of rock, nearly vertical and destitute of vegetation.  In that cul-de-sac I was caught like a bear in a pen.  Pursuit was needless; they had only to wait.

“They waited.  For two days and nights, crouching behind a rock topped with a growth of mesquite, and with the cliff at my back, suffering agonies of thirst and absolutely hopeless of deliverance, I fought the fellows at long range, firing occasionally at the smoke of their rifles, as they did at that of mine.  Of course, I did not dare to close my eyes at night, and lack of sleep was a keen torture.

“I remember the morning of the third day, which I knew was to be my last.  I remember, rather indistinctly, that in my desperation and delirium I sprang out into the open and began firing my repeating rifle without seeing anybody to fire at.  And I remember no more of that fight.

“The next thing that I recollect was my pulling myself out of a river just at nightfall.  I had not a rag of clothing and knew nothing of my whereabouts, but all that night I traveled, cold and footsore, toward the north.  At daybreak I found myself at Fort C. F. Smith, my destination, but without my dispatches.  The first man that I met was a sergeant named William Briscoe, whom I knew very well.  You can fancy his astonishment at seeing me in that condition, and my own at his asking who the devil I was.

“‘Dave Duck,’ I answered; ‘who should I be?’

“He stared like an owl.

“‘You do look it,’ he said, and I observed that he drew a little away from me.  ‘What’s up?’ he added.

“I told him what had happened to me the day before.  He heard me through, still staring; then he said: 

“’My dear fellow, if you are Dave Duck I ought to inform you that I buried you two months ago.  I was out with a small scouting party and found your body, full of bullet-holes and newly scalped—­ somewhat mutilated otherwise, too, I am sorry to say—­right where you say you made your fight.  Come to my tent and I’ll show you your clothing and some letters that I took from your person; the commandant has your dispatches.’