shelter the redskins, but we kept in the open and cautiously examined every brake within gunshot of an entrance to the river.  We succeeded in getting all the animals out of the water before dark, with the exception of one bunch, where the exit would require the use of a mattock before the cattle could climb it, and a few head that had bogged in the quicksand below Horsehead Crossing.  There was little danger of a rise in the river, the loose contingent had a dry sand-bar on which to rest, and as the Indians had no use for them there was little danger of their being molested before morning.

We fell back about a mile from the river and camped for the night.  Although we were all dead for sleep, extra caution was taken to prevent a surprise, either Goodnight or Loving remaining on guard over the outfit, seeing that the men kept awake on herd and that the guards changed promptly.  Charlie Goodnight owned a horse that he contended could scent an Indian five hundred yards, and I have never questioned the statement.  He had used him in the Ranger service.  The horse by various means would show his uneasiness in the immediate presence of Indians, and once the following summer we moved camp at midnight on account of the warnings of that same horse.  We had only a remuda with us at the time, but another outfit encamped with us refused to go, and they lost half their horses from an Indian surprise the next morning and never recovered them.  I remember the ridicule which was expressed at our moving camp on the warnings of a horse.  “Injun-bit,” “Man-afraid-of-his-horses,” were some of the terms applied to us,—­yet the practical plainsman knew enough to take warning from his dumb beast.  Fear, no doubt, gives horses an unusual sense of smell, and I have known them to detect the presence of a bear, on a favorable wind, at an incredible distance.

The night passed quietly, and early the next morning we rode to recover the remainder of the cattle.  An effort was also made to rescue the bogged ones.  On approaching the river, we found the beeves still resting quietly on the sand-bar.  But we had approached them at an angle, for directly over head and across the river was a brake overgrown with thick brush, a splendid cover in which Indians might be lurking in the hope of ambushing any one who attempted to drive out the beeves.  Two men were left with a single mattock to cut out and improve the exit, while the rest of us reconnoitered the thickety motte across the river.  Goodnight was leery of the thicket, and suggested firing a few shots into it.  We all had long-range guns, the distance from bank to bank was over two hundred yards, and a fusillade of shots was accordingly poured into the motte.  To my surprise we were rewarded by seeing fully twenty Indians skulk out of the upper end of the cover.  Every man raised his sights and gave them a parting volley, but a mesquite thicket, in which their horses were secreted, soon sheltered them and they fell back into the hills on the western side of the river.  With the coast thus cleared, half a dozen of us rode down into the river-bed and drove out the last contingent of about three hundred cattle.  Goodnight informed us that those Indians had no doubt been watching us for days, and cautioned us never to give a Comanche an advantage, advice which I never forgot.