CHAPTER SIX.
SURROUNDED.
A plain of pure sand, glaring red-yellow under the first rays of the rising sun; towards the east and west apparently illimitable, but interrupted northward by a chain of table-topped hills, and along its southern edge by a continuous cliff, rising wall-like to the height of several hundred feet, and trending each way beyond the verge of vision.
About half-distance between this prolonged escarpment and the outlying hills six large "Conestoga" waggons, locked tongue and tail together, enclosing a lozenge-shaped or elliptical space--a _corral_--inside which are fifteen men and five horses.
Only ten of the men are living; the other five are dead, their bodies lying a-stretch between the wheels of the waggons.

Three of the horses have succumbed to the same fate.
Outside are many dead mules; several still attached to the protruding poles, that have broken as their bodies fell crashing across them.
Fragments of leather straps and cast gearing tell of others that have torn loose, and scoured off from the perilous spot.
Inside and all around are traces of a struggle--the ground scored and furrowed by the hoofs of horses, and the booted feet of men, with here and there little rivulets and pools of blood.

This, fast filtering into the sand, shows freshly spilled--some of it still smoking.
All the signs tell of recent conflict.

And so should they, since it is still going on, or only suspended to recommence a new scene of the strife, which promises to be yet more terrible and sanguinary than that already terminated.
A tragedy easy of explanation.

There is no question about why the waggons have been stopped, or how the men, mules, and horses came to be killed.