Sol. Taylor's Escape

New York Sun. I carne West when I was seventeen years of age (said oíd Sol. Taylor, of Georgetown, Colorado, thu other day), and now I'm a bit over sixty. You can figuer that up and see how long I've been skirmishing with Indiana, grizzlies, andpanthers, rattlesnakes and the other pesky varmints oí the mountain, plain and prairie. There hasn't been an Indian warfor the last half century that I haven't rad a hand in, and I recon I've had as many Btand-up fights on my own hook as any scout ov hunter you can name. I have been captured and put to the torture twice, and been captuied and got away without tortura three or four timea. ín times of peace I have lived with the Pawnees, Kiowas, Apaches, Sioux, Cheyennes, and Blackieet, and in times of war I havefought all these tribes. Mebbe I ani, there. fore, ti puity good judge oí ludían natur', and when you ask me which tribe of redskins has the most honor I reply that I never yet saw an Indain whom I would trust a rod. The only reason that some of 'era have served the Government as scouts and traitors is because they happened to hate their own kind just thenalittle wuss thau thcy iid the white man. However, you wantsome of my own adventures, and I wül yive you one: Before the days of railroads in the West a man who was spilin' for an Indian fight could eet it witliin rifle shot of E'ort Kearney, and this state of ailairs continued up to 1866 and later. The last time I was captured was on the Smoky Hill fork of the Kansas River, and it was while the railroad was being pushed across the State of Kansas. A railroad through the Indian country meant good-hy to game and good-by to the Indian. The redskin realized this as foicibly as the white man, and he was on hand to fight the progresa of the road. He was foolish enough to suppose tiiat the killing off of a few scouts and surveyors would stop all work, and by the time the road was half way across the State of Kansas every Indian who had any patriotism about 'nim was in front of it and doing battle. The coutractors had to employ a great many scouts and fighters to protect the advance men, and 1 was one of those thus engaged. In the flve months of my employment I killed thirty-nine Indians and brought thirty-nine scalps to camp, and there were other scouta who did as well or better. We lid not lose near as many men in propórtion, as we tought entirely on ttie defensive, and had all the advantage. My capture oceurred one morning in September. One of the engineers of the road had been on a spree, and while verging on delirium tremenshad left camp and wondered off. He had been gone two or three hours before he was missed, and at midnieht of a rainy, gusty niirht six of us Btarted out on foot to hunt him up. As no one knew the directiou he had taken, each of us went his own way. There were plenty of Indians around us, and a scout had been wounded that afternoon within half a mile of our camp. Each man of us who went dut took big chances of being captured, but there was no hesitating or hanging back on that account. Our camp was close to the river, and my flrsfc move was to cross the streanï. The water was no more than waist deep, and I had no trouble in reaching the other bank. The engineer, whose name was Sewell, had gone off In his shirt and trousers ancl boots. He was bareheaded, out of his senses, and had no weapons of ány sort. My ouly hope of nnding him was that he would become exhausted before giiing far and sit down. Once across the stream, I held to the north for about a mile, and then turned to the left and kept on until I had described a quarter of a circle and come to the river again. I then went back to the starting point and bore to the right, and it was while on my way to the river that four Indians suddnly rose up from thegrassat my feet and seized me. I can't say that I was ofï my guard, but it did seem a bit queer to me a3 I thought it over al'terwards that I should let the skunks get such an advantage over me. I could see fairly well for twenty feet or more around me, but the lellows hugged the earth so closely, and I happend to walk so straight into the trap, that I was done' for before I knew what was i ing on. Not a yell was uttered - not a word spoken. Two of them tripped ma up, and the other two piled on to me and disarmed me, and in less than a minute my arms were jerked behind me and made fast, and away we went to the northwest on a trot. This was maintained for abont a mile, when we carne upon a party of fifty mounted redskins, and in the midst of them I found Sewell. He was prostrate with exhaustion and fear, and when I spoke to him, which act the Indians seemed rather to encourage, he began crying and sobbing like a child. I was lifted up behind a warrior and off we went at a gallop, riding to the west and keepin close to the river until we had mad at least fifteen miles. Then we ca me upon an Indian village as itwasgrowIng daylight. My feelings during that ride , anything but agreeable, I can assure you. The fact that I was not killed at the moment of my capture had a significance which I well understood. I was iust as certain to goto the stake for torture as I remained a prisoner, and I did a heap of thinking in hopes to get a plan for escape. Mounted behind an Indian, my arins tiedsotightly that I was a constant suffurer, and obliged to keep my balance by the use of my legs alone, there was no earthly show for me to carry out my écheme. Sewell was mounted on the horse just ahead of me, and his conduet went far to distress and unnerve me. He kept up a constant lamentation, and was continually beseeching me not to let the Indians do him harm. Drink had lost its effect on him, and to come out of his spell and tind himself ia the hands of the less redskins had taken all the pluck out of hini. He vas doing the very worst thing he could have done, for I heard the Indians gloating over the prospect when he should come to the stake. There was considerably hurrah when we rode into the village, and had I not been able to understand a word oí the dialect, the looks and actions of the Indians would have been suflicient to teil me what fate they intended to mete out to us. Sewell was placed in one lodge and I in another, and the war party were aoon engaged with breakfast. It was not vet fully daylight when I was pulled off the horse, and therefore Í had not yet been recognized. I was pretty generally known to all the tribee, and they had named me "The Long Death." I not the name by killing some of thetn with a rille whichknocked them over when the supposed themselves far beyond range. My only hope wasthatnooneinthecrowd would be able to identify me, as I had lately had my hair cut close and my whiskers entirely removed, but dayliht had only come when three warriors looked In on me, gave a start of surprise, and one of them called at the top of his voice: "It is the Long Death! We have got hini at last. Here is the white hun ter who has killed so many of our people." The cat was out of the bag, as the old saying goes, and I stood there and faced them and knew that 1 was doomed to the most horrible tortures they could invent. They did not keep me long in waitinjf. The knowledge of my identity whctted their savage appetites, and while the warriors who captured us were eating breakfast the rest of the village were astir with preparations. The camp wasiïiabitof valley on the bank of Snioky Ilill Fork, and two young trees were cut down, trimmed to a proper length and then driven into the ground in the centre of the vil' lage. The one intended for me was almost in front of my tepee, and I stoon at the entrance and saw the young men drive it into the earth. More than that, I sung out to them in a steady voice in their own dialect. "A stake like that to hold The Long Death! You shall see how ho will tear it up!" My words were received with shouts of satisfaction. No people on earth respect courage in a man as much as the Indians. There are no less cruel to a game man, but his gameness will shorten hls torture. Feeling that my time had come, and hoping to provoke some of them to shoot or tomahawk me, I called out the names of half a dozen of tiie tribe whom I had sent to the happy hunting grounds. Some of the young men fairly raved to get at me, but the order of thechief was to wait. I boasted tiat I could outshoot, outride and outrun their best men, and offered to fight any six of them if they would turn me loose, but all this talk only gave them the more satisfaction in thinking of the torture in store for me. On the same principie that people eat their pie last, the Indians led Sewell out first. His condition was such that but little fun could be anticipated from his torture. He was a large, fine-looking man, but the result of his spree and of his capture was to break him down. He had no more courage than a child, and it was pitiful to see him weep and hear his lamentationa. I begeed of the Indians to let him go, stating that he was acivilian who had never injuredthem, and was so broken down that he could not live long, and but for the hot-headed young men in the tribe I should have got him off. They urged that he was assisting to build the railroad which was driving the game and the Indian out of the country, and that the white men never spared a warrior because he was ill. Such talk as this settled it, and the engineer was led out, strippéd of his clothing, and tied securely to the stake. - Had I refused to look on, it would have been taken as an act of cowardice on my part. Reading this I stepped outside the lodge and stood within ten feet of the stake. Sewell wept and begged while being made fast, but when they stapped back he suddenly grew calm and asked of me: "Taylor, what does this all mean? What are they going to do with me?" "They are going to torture you, Mr. Sewell." "Are you a prisoner, too?" "Yes, and they will torture me after finishing you." 'My God! but this is awful. I have $800 at the camp. Won't they take that and release us?" Ireplied that if we were worth a million dollars a piece we could not purchase our Überty under the circumstances, and advisedhim toca'.l upall his courage and seek to die like a man. Any sign of weakness on hia part would excite con tempt andincreased torture, and the better way was to defy them to do their worst. I believe he tried his best to brace up, but his nerves were dreadfully shattered, and after three or four minutes he began crying again. This had just the effect I predicted. Half a hundred boys were sent off to cut switches, and when they returned they were told to go ahead and applythem tothe engineer. The idea was to whip some courage into him, but it was a flat failure. Almost at the first blow the man cried out like a woman, and, his feet not having yet been tied, ne danced about like a puppet. I called out to him to kick his tormentors, but he paid 110 heed to my voice, and after a time he stood stock still and let the boys whip him until blood was drawn in a score of places. All this time he cried like a boy four or five years old, and I heard some of the old warriors say that he was the most cowardly white man that they had ever met. He may have lacked courage, but 1 always believed his conduct to have been the result of his shattered mental and physical condition. After the boys had switched him for ten minutes they were called off, and couple oï warriors advanced with their muzzle-loading rifles and began to fire charges of powder into the poor fellow's flesh. Does it hurt? Well, sir, heil can't be any worse. I've had a dozen charges lired into me, and I never feit any pain to equal it. 111 take two bullets in preference to one charge of powder every time. The first charge set him to dancing and screamiiiir, and at the third or fourth he kicked one of the warriors over, and became so savage that they had to fully bind him to the stake. They fired thirly-four charges in all, and by the time they hadfinishedyou could not have told that Sewell was a white man. His agony was something awful, and he writhed about with such stvength that the stake had twice to be diiven deeper. His shneks ank screams, as I afterward knew, were heard a distance of more than two miles, and yet this was only the beginning of what they had in store tor him. The next move was to apply the burning sticks. Some creen sticks had been put upon the fireonpurpoan, and three or four warriors applied the burninp ends to various portions of the engineer's body. The pain fairly drove him crazy, and in a short timo he lainted. Water was brought from the stream and dashed over him, and during this interval many warriors j erowded around me to see how I was ! bearing up. "Doga! Do you think you can ! make The Long Death cry like that?" I shouted at them. "Here, pull up my trousers and aee where the cow ardly Sioux shot powder into mylegs. Pull ofE my boots and find where the Cheyennes applied the fire sticks. Did I weep like a woman? Go ask them. And when you ask that, inquire who killed the Black Eagle, Red Horse, Big Mountain, Great Buffalo and Black Feather. They will teH you, The Long Death. Bnt for the presence of four or five chiefs I should have done for on the spot, so excited were the young men. By this time Sewell had regained his senses, and was sobbing and wailing again, and they went back to their sport. A warrior approached him with a sharp knife and slashed him in fifty different placee, each cut beine deep enough to be painful, but none of them very serious. The gush oí blood soon turned the man into a horrible looking object, and several times he would have fainted had they not had water at hand to throw over him. He had screamed so loud and long that his voice was now entirely gone, and the only sound he could utter was a groan. He had lona seemed unconscious of my presence, and I was glad of this. I do not thmk he was in his full senses after the burning. After the warrior had cut and slashed with his knife he feil back to give place to another. This second one meanttodofiner work. Hemeant, as a first move, to cut the victitn'a tongue out, but as he reached for it with his left hand Sewell snapped at him like a dog, got the black hand firmly between his jaws, and then there was a grand uproar. Everybody enjoyed the fix the Indian was in, and whenever he motioned as if he meant to use his knife they shouted to him to give the victim fair play. Sewell held to him lor ful ly five minutes, lacerating the hand lfke a bulldog, and then three or four warriors seized him and made him let go. The bitten warrior relinquished the knife to another and during the next quarter of an hour Sewell suffered the loss of his nose, ears, fingers and lips. He shrieked out in agony when his nose was sliced off, but after that he never even groaned, and I consoled myself with the nope that he was dead. The Indians finally became satisfied that they could get no more "fun" out of. him, and he was scalped and the fagaots at his feet werelighted to consume the body. My time had come. There was a grand yell trom every warrior aa the two guards led meto the stake. How did I feel? VVell, I was recklessly desperate. I hated to go without havïng revenge on some of them, and, as there was no other way, I gave them a tongue lashing. I called them women and cowards; I cited fictitious cases, when ons hunter had licked six of them; I dared and defied them to do their worst. I liad them worked up until they fairly screamed for my blood, and I reasoned that the torture would not last long. I was stripped of every vestige of clothing, bound hand and foot to the stake, and, as in the englneer's case, two warriors made ready to shoot powder into me. They were loading their guns when, out from the heavy growth of cottonwoods behind the camp, came a line of forty men on a run, and just in the rear of them seventy-five army troopers. I saw the men before any one else in camp. Indeed, they were not pistol shot away when the alarm was given. It was the quickest and bloodiest fight on record. Six of the dismounted men pusbed straight for me, knowing I was likely to be killed by söme savage, and I was cut loose and a revolver was given to me before the fight was hardly on. In ten minutes not a living buck was left in camp. We killed twenty-two and the rest broke out of reipch. Seven or eight old men, niDe or ten youngfellowsand six squaws were likewise killed. We captured ninety-two ponies, a ereat lot of powder and lead, several hundred dollars' worth of robes, and dealt the tribe a blow it never recovered from. What we could not carry away we burned, and not an article they could make useful was '