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Down the Mother Lode by Vivia Hemphill
page 59 of 113 (52%)
great fire, and mad dancing and war whooping. He started toward them.

"Don't go there, pardner," called an old trapper. "Them bucks is crazy
with drink, an' if I knows anything about Injuns, it won't be no safe
place for a white man."

So passed Longley's last chance for his life! His cries for aid were
mingled with the savage whoops of his ferocious enemies. Even the people
living across the river who heard his continued shouts, took them to be
part of the celebration.

Maddened by drink and by the ever mounting excitement of their
incantations, one of the most ghastly deeds ever perpetrated by Indians
upon the whole river was finished before daylight.

The condition of Longley's body upon its discovery roused the entire
settlement, but the Indians had vanished over the hills and across Bear
river. The chief had gone home at sundown, and it was as impossible to
find those who were on the bar that night, as to distinguish one grain
of sand from another.

The old pier stands to this day, notwithstanding the fierce battering of
the floods of nearly seventy years; a monument enduring long after the
Digger Indians are gone off the face of the earth, as though to
commemmorate the power of the white race and that member of it who gave
up his life at its base.



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