It was unsafe to venture out alone, if not impossible
to find the way ; but the two young men who had
.assisted as vaqueros in the valley set out with me
and led the way till we touched the trail leading from
Red Bluffs to Yreka on the eastern spurs of Mount
Shasta. Here they took a tender farewell, turned
back, and I never saw them again. They were
murdered before I returned to their village.
The facts of the cruel assassinations are briefly these. The following summer the young men went down into Pit River Valley, then filling up rapidly with white settlers, and there took to themselves wives from the Pit River tribe, with whom the Shastas were on the best of terms.
These young fellows had a fondness for the whites, and were very frequently about the settlements. They finally made a camp near some men who were making hay, and put in their time and supported themselves by hunting and fishing, at the same time keeping up friendly relations with the whites by liberal donations of game.
One day one of these Indians, with his young wife, went out among the hay makers, and while he was standing there, watching the men at work, two men came up from a neighbouring part of the prairie and shot him down in cold blood, saying only that they knew him and that he was u a damned bad Injin."
This is, or was at that time, considered quite suffi cient excuse for taking an Indian s life on the Pacific.
