and disaster had followed them all the summer. Still
they would mourn for Paquita and the brave young
warrior, and they went up to the hill-top among the
pines and filled the woods with lamentations.
Let us hasten to the conclusion of these unhappy days. I rested a little while, then took part in a skirmish, captured a few cavalry horses, and two prisoners, whose lives I managed to save at the risk of my own, for the Indians were now made desperate. The Indians were now doing what little fighting was done, entirely with arrows.
The Modoc Indians had exhausted all their arrows and were returning home. A general despondency was upon the Indians. No supplies whatever for the approaching winter had been secured. The Indians had been kept back from the fisheries on the rivers and the hunting grounds in the valleys. The Indian men had been losing time in war and the Indian women in making arrows and nursing the wounded. Even in the plentiful season of early autumn a famine was looking them in the face.
No gentleness marked our actions now; I did not restrain my Indians in any ruthless thing they un dertook.
I made a hurried ride through the Modoc plains around Tula lake and saw there but little hope of continuing a successful struggle as it was then being conducted. Lieutenant Crook, now the General Crook famous in American history, had established a military post on the head-la
