He said:  “I would like for my brother to take my place and let me live so I can take care of my wife and little girl.”

The carrier for the Inter-Ocean was the first to get his dispatch, the Examiner the second, I receiving mine just as the last Indian was hung, and now for the race to see who gets there first.  It was eleven o’clock when we started.  We all traveled together for the first twenty miles, where I left the wagon road and took the trail for Ashland.  Now I had sixty miles to ride over a trail and they had eighty miles over a wagon road.  At this junction where the trail left the wagon road I bade the other couriers good-day, telling them that in case they beat me they must treat to the oysters when we met at Jacksonville, and I sped away and lost no time in getting from there to Cold Springs, where I found my other horse picketed out as I had ordered.  I dismounted, threw my saddle on the other horse, which was apparently feeling fine, mounted him and was off again, leaving the other horse picketed at the same place, so my man could get him on his return.  My horse took a long sweeping gallop and kept it up for about twelve miles, by which time he was beginning to sweat quite freely, and I commenced to urge him and put him down to all I thought he would stand.  When I came in sight of Black Bess she raised her head and whinnied to me.  The young man was lying asleep and holding her rope, while she was grazing near him.  Again I changed my saddle from my other horse to Black Bess, and gave the young man instructions to start at once and lead my horse slowly so as to prevent him from cooling off too fast.  I mounted Black Bess and now I was on the homestretch.  I did not urge her any for the first few miles until she commenced sweating freely, after which I commenced to increase her speed, and fifteen minutes after six I rode up to the telegraph office and handed my dispatch to the operator, who started it on the wire at once.  I led my mare up and down the streets to prevent her from cooling off too quick, and when it was known where I was from, everybody in town had about forty questions to ask relative to the hanging of the four Modoc braves.

On leaving the telegraph office I asked the operator to let me know when the first dispatch started from Jacksonville, and while at supper he came in and told me that the Examiner had just started their dispatch over the wire, which was just one and three-quarter hours behind me in getting to the office.  The next day I rode to Jacksonville, and the day following the balance of the crowd came in from the fort.  Among them were the three reporters, all well pleased with the time their bearers had made in carrying their dispatches, and that night we all had what in those days we used to term “a-way-up time.”

The balance of the Indians who were taken prisoners in this Modoc war were afterwards taken to Florida and placed on a small reservation, which, I presume, was done on account of the bitter feeling that existed among the people of that section of the country toward this tribe on account of the assassination of Gen. Canby, Col.  Thomas and George Meeks, the interpreter, as well as the many other people that were murdered on Lost river and Tule Lake.