Jim told me where to look for the camp when I wanted to find it, and I left them, on a mission the danger of which I do not think one of my readers can understand, but which at that time I thought very little about.

I had followed the trail of the Indians but a short distance before I was convinced that there were a great many wounded in the band, for there was so much blood scattered all along the trail.  I had followed the trail about five miles when I came to a high ridge, and on looking down on the other side I saw what looked to me like two or three hundred camp fires, and from the noise I heard I thought that many that I had thought to be wounded must be dead, for it was the same sound that I had often heard the squaws make over their dead.  I decided by the appearance of the camp that I had discovered the main camping ground of the Indians.  On deciding this in my mind, I hurried back as quickly as I could to tell Jim.  When I reached camp, supper was just over.  After I had looked after my horse, I went into the camp, and a lady met me and invited me to her tent, saying she had kept some supper warm for me and had been on the lookout for me to come back, and the reader may rest assured I was hungry enough to accept the invitation and to do ample justice to the good things the kind lady had saved for me.

While I was eating, Jim came to me and asked what I had discovered.  I told him of the big Indian camp I had found at the foot of the ridge, which was probably five or six miles from where we were then in camp, and I told him of the noise the squaws had made too.  He said, “Well, I will bet my old hat that we won’t have any more trouble with them, for when they come back to get their dead warriors in the morning and find them without their scalps, they won’t follow us any farther.”

So feeling safe to do so, everyone except the guards turned in for the night.  The night passed without anything happening to disturb us.  Next morning I got up early and mounted my horse and went to the place where we’d had the fight to see if the dead Indians had been taken away.  I found that they had all been taken away during the night.  I got back to camp in time for breakfast.  I told Jim that I had been to see about the Indians we had killed the day before, but I found no bodies there and supposed the squaws had taken them away in the night.

Jim jumped up and clapped his hands together and said, “Good, good, we will not have any more trouble with these Indians, and I don’t believe we will have any more fights with the Indians this side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, for the news of our scalping so many of the Indians will fly from tribe to tribe faster than we can travel, and you may be sure they all will be on the lookout to avoid meeting us.”

Everything moved quietly for the next three days, and we made good progress on our journey.

The night before we reached the sink of the Humboldt, while we were at supper about a dozen ladies came to Jim and me.  One of them said with a smile, “Mr. Drannan, we have two favors to ask of you.”