It was hot in the corral that afternoon.  The sun blazed down out of a cloudless sky, and there was no wind.  The men, lying with their rifles in the trench under the wagons, were partly shaded; but the big rifle pit, in which were over a hundred women and children, was exposed to the full power of the sun.  Here, too, were the wounded men, over whom we erected awnings of blankets.  It was crowded and stifling in the pit, and I was for ever stealing out of it to the firing-line, and making a great to-do at carrying messages for father.

Our grave mistake had been in not forming the wagon-circle so as to inclose the spring.  This had been due to the excitement of the first attack, when we did not know how quickly it might be followed by a second one.  And now it was too late.  At fifteen rods’ distance from the Indian position on the hill we did not dare unchain our wagons.  Inside the corral, south of the graves, we constructed a latrine, and, north of the rifle pit in the centre, a couple of men were told off by father to dig a well for water.

In the mid-afternoon of that day, which was the second day, we saw Lee again.  He was on foot, crossing diagonally over the meadow to the north-west just out of rifle-shot from us.  Father hoisted one of mother’s sheets on a couple of ox-goads lashed together.  This was our white flag.  But Lee took no notice of it, continuing on his way.

Laban was for trying a long shot at him, but father stopped him, saying that it was evident the whites had not made up their minds what they were going to do with us, and that a shot at Lee might hurry them into making up their minds the wrong way.

“Here, Jesse,” father said to me, tearing a strip from the sheet and fastening it to an ox-goad.  “Take this and go out and try to talk to that man.  Don’t tell him anything about what’s happened to us.  Just try to get him to come in and talk with us.”

As I started to obey, my chest swelling with pride in my mission, Jed Dunham cried out that he wanted to go with me.  Jed was about my own age.

“Dunham, can your boy go along with Jesse?” father asked Jed’s father.  “Two’s better than one.  They’ll keep each other out of mischief.”

So Jed and I, two youngsters of nine, went out under the white flag to talk with the leader of our enemies.  But Lee would not talk.  When he saw us coming he started to sneak away.  We never got within calling distance of him, and after a while he must have hidden in the brush; for we never laid eyes on him again, and we knew he couldn’t have got clear away.

Jed and I beat up the brush for hundreds of yards all around.  They hadn’t told us how long we were to be gone, and since the Indians did not fire on us we kept on going.  We were away over two hours, though had either of us been alone he would have been back in a quarter of the time.  But Jed was bound to outbrave me, and I was equally bound to outbrave him.