We remained at Bridge Creek several days, recruiting our horses and resting from the fatigues of our recent severe and trying expedition.  In reading my simple narrative some may say we were taking desperate chances in following an enemy, outnumbering us several times, into his own country.  That is true in a sense.  But we had adopted his own tactics, and depended on a surprise.  Had we come out in the open and shown ourselves, we would probably have fared badly in such an unequal contest.  Secrecy, therefore, was our only safe course, and that required both skill and caution.  We knew the Indians would be off their guard, that they would never dream of pursuit, and when surprised would scatter like a covey of quail.  Another object was to come to close quarters as quickly as possible, so as to use our revolvers when the rifles had been emptied.  Howard Maupin, an old Indian fighter, and father of the youth who accompanied us, once remarked that in “close quarters an Indian can’t hit the side of a barn.”  I understood this when, years after in the first battle in the lava beds with the Modocs, I asked General Wheaton to signal to Colonel Bernard to cease firing and I would charge with the volunteers.  We had them hemmed between two lines, with an intervening space of not more than 150 yards.  He refused, saying we had lost too many men and the country would not justify the sacrifice of human life.  We had fought them all day, and had suffered severely, and finally retreated under cover of darkness.  It cost nearly three hundred men to close the Modoc war, including the life of the gallant General Canby.  I believed then—­I know now we could have whipped them in twenty minutes with the loss of less than a dozen men.

Chapter VI.

One Sad Tale From Canyon City History.

After a few days at Bridge Creek we joined a pack train going to Canyon City from The Dalles, and though the road was infested with savages, who mercilessly slaughtered small parties, we arrived at the then flourishing mining camp without mishap or adventure.  Canyon City at that time was a typical mining camp.  There were congregated every known character, race, profession and creed.  Under a rough exterior the lawyer, doctor, minister, the rude western frontiersman and the staid and sober farmer, worked side by side.  There was no distinction of dress among that restless, surging, throbbing throng of humanity, drawn thither by the all-absorbing motive—­the glittering dust that lay hidden beneath the gravel and sands of the streams and along the ravines.  The bond of sympathy, however, among the miners was close, and as warm hearts beat beneath the flannel shirts as ever throbbed in the breast of man.