Down the Mother Lode by Vivia Hemphill
page 59 of 113 (52%)
page 59 of 113 (52%)
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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. Grizzley Bob of Snake Gulch |
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