Jim said, “I told those men not to go away from the train, that there was danger of their losing their scalps if they left us, and I also told them that if they went a half a mile from the train I should not be responsible for them dead or alive.  They answered that they did not believe there was an Indian in the country, and that they would take the chances anyway, and more than that, I would not know where to go to hunt for them any more than you would, for the country for miles around is like this, and I would be willing to bet anything that you will never see them all again.”

Dusk was settling down, and as the night came on and the hunters did not come in, the excitement grew more intense.  About twenty men came to me and inquired if I knew what kind of a country the hunters would be apt to go into.  I answered that if they kept the course which they said they intended to go, it would lead them to the Buffalo country and also into the heart of the Indian country.  One of them then asked me if I would be willing to try to find the absent men if I had enough men with me to help.

I answered, “Why, my friends, it would be like hunting for a needle in a haystack.  You certainly do not understand the ways of the Indians.  If the Indians have killed those men, they will take the bodies with them if they have to carry them a hundred miles.  They will take them to their village and spend two or three days in having a scalp dance, so you will see how useless it would be to try to find them, and what is more to be thought of, if we should stay here two or three days we should in all probability be attacked by the Utes ourselves, and there is no knowing how many of the people would be killed, or how much other damage would be done.”

It was getting towards bed time when four women came to me with their faces swollen with tears.  One of them said, “Mr. Drannan, do you think our husbands have been killed by the Indians?”

I answered, “That is a question I can not answer, but I will say that I hope they have not; they may have lost their course and in that way have escaped the Indians.”

While I was talking with the women, I heard the tramp of horses’ feet coming towards camp on the trail.

I said, “Listen, perhaps they are coming now.” and we went to meet the coming horsemen.  There were four of them, and one of them was the husband of the woman I had been talking to.  When they came up to us, he jumped off his horse and, clasping his wife in his arms he said, “Oh Mary, I never expected to see you again.”

In a few minutes everybody in camp was standing around those four men, and they surely had a dreadful story to tell.  They said, they did not know how far they had ridden that morning when they sighted a band of Buffalo in a little valley.  They fired at them and killed four; they dismounted and turned their horses loose and went to skinning their Buffalo and had the hides nearly off of them when, without a sound to warn them of danger, the Indians pounced upon them, and of all the yelling and shouting that ever greeted any one’s ears, that was the worst they had ever heard, and the arrows flew as thick as hail.