All was work with us on the instant.  While the wagons were being dragged and chained into the circle with tongues inside—­I saw women and little boys and girls flinging their strength on the wheel spokes to help—­we took toll of our losses.  First, and gravest of all, our last animal had been run off.  Next, lying about the fires they had been building, were seven of our men.  Four were dead, and three were dying.  Other men, wounded, were being cared for by the women.  Little Rish Hardacre had been struck in the arm by a heavy ball.  He was no more than six, and I remember looking on with mouth agape while his mother held him on her lap and his father set about bandaging the wound.  Little Rish had stopped crying.  I could see the tears on his cheeks while he stared wonderingly at a sliver of broken bone sticking out of his forearm.

Granny White was found dead in the Foxwell wagon.  She was a fat and helpless old woman who never did anything but sit down all the time and smoke a pipe.  She was the mother of Abby Foxwell.  And Mrs. Grant had been killed.  Her husband sat beside her body.  He was very quiet.  There were no tears in his eyes.  He just sat there, his rifle across his knees, and everybody left him alone.

Under father’s directions the company was working like so many beavers.  The men dug a big rifle pit in the centre of the corral, forming a breastwork out of the displaced sand.  Into this pit the women dragged bedding, food, and all sorts of necessaries from the wagons.  All the children helped.  There was no whimpering, and little or no excitement.  There was work to be done, and all of us were folks born to work.

The big rifle pit was for the women and children.  Under the wagons, completely around the circle, a shallow trench was dug and an earthwork thrown up.  This was for the fighting men.

Laban returned from a scout.  He reported that the Indians had withdrawn the matter of half a mile, and were holding a powwow.  Also he had seen them carry six of their number off the field, three of which, he said, were deaders.

From time to time, during the morning of that first day, we observed clouds of dust that advertised the movements of considerable bodies of mounted men.  These clouds of dust came toward us, hemming us in on all sides.  But we saw no living creature.  One cloud of dirt only moved away from us.  It was a large cloud, and everybody said it was our cattle being driven off.  And our forty great wagons that had rolled over the Rockies and half across the continent stood in a helpless circle.  Without cattle they could roll no farther.

At noon Laban came in from another scout.  He had seen fresh Indians arriving from the south, showing that we were being closed in.  It was at this time that we saw a dozen white men ride out on the crest of a low hill to the east and look down on us.

“That settles it,” Laban said to father.  “The Indians have been put up to it.”