The door of the larger dugout,
where the horses had been stabled, was also torn away. Five dead horses
lay near by, a part of the stage stock kept there. We kept our eyes as
long as we could from what we knew must next be seen--the bodies of the
agent and his two stablemen, mutilated and half consumed, under the
burned-out timbers. I say the bodies, for the lower limbs of all three
had been dismembered and cast in a heap near where the bodies of the
horses lay. We were on the scene of one of the brutal massacres of the
savage Indian tribes. It seemed strange these things should be in a spot
so silent and peaceful, under a sky so blue and gentle.
"Sioux!" said Auberry, looking down as he leaned on his long rifle.
"Not a wheel has crossed their trail, and I reckon the trail's blocked
both east and west. But the boys put up a fight." He led us here and
there and showed dried blotches on the soil, half buried now in the
shifting sand; showed us the bodies of a half-dozen ponies, killed a
couple of hundred yards from the door of the dugout.
"They must have shot in at the front till they killed the boys," he
added. "And they was so mad they stabbed the horses for revenge, the way
they do sometimes.
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