The motley army of the Piute tribe was sweeping tremendously
across a sage-brush valley of Nevada, their force two hundred braves in
number. They marched abreast, some thirty yards apart, and formed a
line that was more than two miles long.
The spectacle presented was wonderful to see. Red, yellow, and indigo
in their blankets and trappings, the hunters dotted out a line of color
as far as sight could reach. Through the knee-high brush they swept
ahead like a firing-line of battle, their guns incessantly booming,
their advance never halted, their purpose as grim and inexorable as
fate itself. Indeed, Death, the Reaper, multiplied two-hundred-fold
and mowing a swath of incredible proportions, could scarcely have
pillaged the land of its conies more thoroughly.
Before the on-press of the two-mile wall of red men with their smoking
weapons, the panic-stricken rabbits scurried helplessly. Soon or late
they must double back to their burrows, soon or late they must
therefore die.
Behind the army, fully twenty Indian ponies, ridden by the
youngster-braves of the cavalcade, were bearing great white burdens of
the slaughtered hares.
The glint of gun-barrels, shining in the sun, flung back the light,
from end to end of the undulating column.
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