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On that day, as I went for coal oil toward the railroad tracks and the stores, I saw another boy running; he cleared the tracks and headed toward me along the path. As we passed I flung a question at him.

"Indians!" he yelled. "Indians are coming!"

Right now I take a lot of credit to myself, because I did not drop the oil can as I scooted for home, clearing tufts of buffalo grass at just about the height of a prairie chicken when it flies for fresh cover. I still had the clanging oil can as I panted into our yard, yipped a warning to my mother and scrambled out of sight, down a flight of earthen steps into the moldy darkness of our cyclone cellar.

My memory of that occurrence ends as abruptly as a picture that is torn across, but another recollection which may be a piece of it begins with my small self seated on the floor, amid the smell of dust, against the wall of the second floor of the stone railroad station in Ellis; this was also the hotel. Many people were there. The women, with shawls and sun-bonnets on their heads, were enjoying the excitement of being frightened, if I can trust what I seem to remember.