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and when the White man mounts, his chase is eager and his vengeance black.
We pass a homestead which has lately been the scene of one of these mountain episodes.
A daring fellow brought his wife and two daughters up to the great plateau, where by thrift and labour he was making for them a prosperous home.
The girls were pretty, and the wifeless miners and shepherds thought them angels.
A band of Shoshones scalped the whole family.
If the Whiteman's tale is true, these savages not only outraged the women, but slit their noses, broke their joints, and gouged their eyes.
If so, the warriors were attended by their dusky wives; such acts of torture being reserved by Indians as a luxury for their squaws, who snatch a fearful pleasure, in their bondage, from the sight of a White woman's shame and death.
Before the Whites could rally in pursuit, the Shoshones made off, retiring to the trackless wastes where White men's feet have never trod.
The trail was lost, the chase seemed vain; but frontier men are not easily turned aside, and female blood was crying from'the earth for vengeance!
A Pai-Ute scout
1875.
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