Volume 1

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434 HOW THE FREEMEN ESCAPED THE SIOUX.
die of the whip was a stain of fresh blood, but we could
find no further evidence that anyone had been hurt.
About nine o'clock, while we were consulting what measures
should be taken to prevent a surprise—for we supposed
the enemy would lurk about for some days in expectation
of falling upon some straggler—suddenly our sentinel called
out that they were coming on the road directly toward the
fort. Everyone ran to quarters ; I went upon the top of my
house, the most elevated situation in the fort, where I
perceived
a large body of horsemen coming on the road ; but
on examining them with my glass, I saw a cart among
them and soon recognized them as a party of freemen
coming with loads of grease. On arrival they were astonished
to learn of their narrow escape from the Sioux, who
would have shown them no mercy. The usual route of
those freemen in summer, when they come in the fort,
lies along Red river, and is exactly that by which the
enemy came and returned. But on this occasion, the freemen
had taken an unusual route on leaving their tents, and
come by the upper road along the foot of the Hair hills
and Tongue river. During the time we watched the Sioux
this morning at sunrise, the freemen were marching down
Tongue river ; but fortunately for them, the land where the
track runs close to the wood is low, and between that and
where the enemy were is a ridge on which grow willows
this intercepted the view, and to this they owed their safety.
But we now supposed the enemy had fallen in with two
freemen who had left there yesterday about noon with a
cart, on their return to their tents at the foot of the Hair
hills ;
as those just arrived had not met them, but observed
that the track of a cart had gone by the road along Red
river, where the two men must unavoidably have met with
the enemy yesterday afternoon. Of course we gave them
over for dead.
July 25th. Before daylight I set off with five Indians on
horseback to make discoveries on the Sioux tracks. We
found the spot where they had adjusted themselves in the