been lynched.

Before daylight the Indians returned and attacked the wagons and killed
all the whites but one man who escaped down the bank into the river. He
floated down until he was out of hearing of the Indians. When he was
almost worn out and half frozen he got out of the river, wrung the water
from his clothing and started for Fort Larned, seventy-five miles
distant. After leaving the water he noticed a fire, and knew
instinctively that the Indians had set fire to their wagons, and
wondered how many, if any, of the company had escaped as he had so
far done.

Late in the afternoon of the next day a troop of soldiers discovered
this man several miles from Fort Larned in an almost exhausted
condition, dropping down and getting up again. The commanding officer
sent out some soldiers and brought him to the fort. I talked with this
man, and he told me that if the wagon-boss had given the Indians
something to eat, entertained them a little, or given them the smallest
hospitality, he believed they would all have been saved from
that massacre.

He said the Indians plead with the wagon-boss for food, and he thought
if the teamster had not lost his equanimity and made that first luckless
shot the massacre of the Nine Mile Ridge would never have become a thing
of history.

This tragedy created a great fright and made traveling across the plains
difficult. The Indians were hostile only because they did not know the
minds of the white men, and what their attitude toward them would be, if
they were not always prepared to defend themselves. Therefore the people