Had we all been content to look on and then go home peacefully there would have been no trouble, but what boys would act in such unboyish fashion?
Not the boys of Marshalltown, at any rate.

It was just our luck to run up against two drunken Indians riding on a single pony, and someone in the party, I don't know who, hit the pony and started him, to bucking.
Angrier Indians were never seen.

With a whoop and a yell that went ringing across the prairies they started after us, and how we did leg it! How far some of the others ran I have no means of knowing but I know that I ran every foot of the way back to Marshalltown, nor did I stop until I was safe, as I thought, in my father's house.
My troubles did not end there, however, for along in the darkest hours of the night I started from sleep and saw those two Indians, one standing at the head and one at the foot of the bed, and each of them armed with a tomahawk.

That they had come to kill me I was certain, and that they would succeed in doing so seemed to me equally sure.

I tried to scream but I could not.