their country as usual and were passing back and forth, going into Benton and not looking for any trouble at all; but some of the toughs in Benton, whose names I won’t mention, because you may meet some of them, took an old Piegan, a beaver trapper and a good old man, and killed him and threw him into the river; and another man took out a young boy, considerably younger than you are, and just shot him down in the street. A lot of false reports were sent back East about what the Indians had been doing, and the result was that Colonel Baker was ordered to march against a certain village of Indians who were camping up here on the Marias, north of where we are now and about forty miles from Benton. The troops were guided by two men who are now living on the Piegan reservation, each of them married to an Indian woman. The orders given to Colonel Baker were to strike Mountain Chief’s band of Piegans, because from some information they had it was supposed that these people had been plundering and perhaps killing white people. As a matter of fact, the village found by the troops was that of Red Horn and Bear Chief. The camp consisted of less than forty lodges, and probably had in it a little more than two hundred people. The troops got up close to the village in the gray of the morning, without being seen, and their orders were to shoot to kill when they fired. There were but few people stirring when the first volley was fired. They were all killed, and then the people began to stream out of the lodges. At once they saw that they were being attacked by troops, and thought that it was a mistake. Bear Chief, unarmed, rushed toward the soldiers holding up a paper given him by some white man, but before he got to the soldiers he fell, with half a dozen bullets through him. The women and children were killed just as the men were, and of all the village only about forty-five got away, and some of these were off hunting and were not there when the attack was made. There were a hundred and seventy-six Indians killed, thirty-seven of them men, ninety women, and about fifty children.

“There was no pretense of a defense by the Indians. They didn’t fight at all. They were just shot down until the troops got tired of shooting. The Indians have told me that most of the thirty-seven men that were killed were old men and young boys. As if to make it a little rougher on the Indians, there was smallpox in the camp at the time.

“You’ll see old Almost-a-Dog up at the agency, and if you shake hands with him you’ll notice that his hand is crooked. He got that wound at the Baker massacre.”

“Why, Hugh, that’s one of the most terrible things I ever heard of,” said Jack. “A hundred and seventy-six killed, and out of that a hundred and forty women and little children!”

“Yes,” said Hugh, “it always seemed to me pretty bad. Of course, when men go to war or try to steal horses or do anything of that kind they take all the chances that there are. It’s all right to kill them if you can, but how anybody that’s got any sense can shoot down women and children the way that man Baker did gets away with me.

“Well,” he went on, “after a while the news of this massacre drifted East, and I heard that the newspapers took it up and told the truth about it, and I reckon the army officers most concerned in it got called a good many names. I’ve heard that Colonel Baker lost his chance of ever getting very high up in the army on account of this fight, and yet he only did just what he was ordered to do.”

“That certainly was terribly cruel,” said Jack, “and I don’t see how it could be excused.”

“Joe,” said Hugh, turning to the Indian, who had said nothing, but still lay on the grass with his head resting on his hand, “were you in that camp, or were you somewhere else?”

“No,” said Joe, “I was not in that camp. My mother was and a little sister and my father, but I was at Three Sun’s Village, stopping with my aunt. I must have been about three or four years old at that time.”

“Of the people left alive out of that village,” Hugh went on, “there were nearly forty who were women and little bits of children. They were turned loose on the prairie—some of them being sick with the smallpox, you will remember—on the twenty-third of January. Anybody who knows what winter weather is up here in Montana can tell what that means. It’s a wonder that any of them lived to get to a camp where they were looked after.”

Hugh’s story had taken some time in the telling, and by the time he had finished it was quite dark. Jack and Joe got up and went out to where the horses were and changed them to fresh grass, and on their way back brought the beds from the wagon and threw them down close to the fire. Hugh meanwhile had put fresh wood on it and the cheerful blaze lit up the white trunks of the cottonwoods and was reflected on the leaves above. It was a beautiful night, and the three spread their beds near the fire and were soon asleep.