I stayed and looked after the captured horses while the other boys went back after our own horses.  On their return I laid down and slept awhile, but the other boys did not lie down at all that night, for there was not much night left by the time they got in with our horses.

The following morning, as soon as it was light enough to see, we counted the horses and found there were fifty-five of them.

After getting our breakfast we started back on the trail the Indians had come, that being the course we wished to go.  We traveled hard all day, and just at night we came to a little stream running across the valley, that we had looked at through the glasses the evening before.  Here we went into camp for the night, and on looking across the valley on the opposite side of the river we could see through the field glasses a number of little wreaths of smoke curling up into the air, and they were scattered along the foothills here and there for several miles.

I knew at once they were not from Indian fires, for I could not see a lodge, and they were too badly scattered to be an Indian village.

Just what it was we could not make out, but we stopped on the little stream that night, which is now called Shasta river.  I slept but very little, as my broken shoulder was commencing to bother me again from riding.  I was up and down all night long, and was around among the horses many times.

The next morning we were up and had our breakfast and started very early.  We had not gone more than two miles, when, on looking ahead, we saw twelve men coming on horseback.  Through my glasses I saw they were white men, and told the boys so.  George Jones could not believe they were white men until he looked through the glass, when he said:  “Well, I’ll be d—­d if they ain’t white men.”

We altered our course so as to meet them, and less than a half hour’s ride brought us face to face.

There was a man by the name of Wm. McConnell riding in the lead, and on meeting us the first word uttered by any of the party was by McConnell.  He said:  “Where in the name of God did you get those horses?” While I was telling him where and how we came in possession of them, George Jones took the five Indian scalps from the pack and said: 

“And there is something else we got at the same time we got the horses.”

Then he took the two white men’s scalps from the pack, also the two rifles, and they were also satisfied that the scalps were the scalps of the two white men who had been herding this same band of horses and mules, for the hair was similar in color to that of the two herders.  One of them had dark brown hair and the other one had rather light hair.

From this company of men we learned that near us there was a mining camp, the stock belonged to the miners, and that the two men killed had been herding the horses and mules about three miles away from camp.  This was a new camp called Greenhorn Gulch.