One day the advance party the Captain, his mother, and Grace, the two Clark boys, Sperry, and little Jim had made their noon stop to wait for the train, just upon the banks of the Snake River. A sharp bluff rose close by, leaving only room around its point for the emigrant road, some five yards wide. In the beautiful grassy prairie, at the foot of this bluff beside the road, the horses, carriage horses and all, had been turned loose to graze. Everything was still, with the deep quiet of a July day in this region. The Captain had taken his gun and gone down the river for a duck hunt. The Clark boys and Sperry were just under the bank asleep. The mother and sister sat in the carriage, knitting. Little Jim, down by the river, was making himself a willow whistle, when he heard Mrs. Clark call, and went up the bank. She said to him, " Go tell the boys to come up and look after the horses," and pointed out a band of Indians coming down the steep mountain -side, and apparently making for the horses, but still a long way off.
While Jim was trying to wake the sleepy boys, she called again, urging them to come quick. The boys started very reluctantly, grumbling that she was always afraid of Indians. As they came up the bank they saw what looked to the frightened little boy like a hundred Indians in war paint, armed with bows and Colt's revolvers. They were riding around and among the horses, swinging their blankets, and every one was giving the blood-curdling war-whoop of the Snakes.
The four boys ran to the carriage, then, scarcely knowing what they did or how, with only the instinctive idea that they must save the horses, threw themselves in front of the now frantic mass of stampeded horses mingled with yelling Indians, with the idea that they might turn them back. The mother and daughter had sprung from the carriage, and were near by.
It was only the work of a few minutes. The Indians had come for this fine band of horses, and have them they would. As the moving mass surged down on the people in front of it, a well-mounted Indian leading the stampede, and all following in the wild, terrific race, Archie fell by a shot, and Grace by another; the mother was shot by a hideous painted Indian, who put the
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