Randall Parrish

Bob Hampton of Placer Randall Parrish

It was not an uncommon tragedy of the West. If slightest chronicle of it survive, it must bediscovered among the musty and nearly forgotten records of the Eighteenth Regiment ofInfantry, yet it is extremely probable that even there the details were never written down. Sufficient if, following certain names on that long regimental roll, there should be duly enteredthose cabalistic symbols signifying to the initiated, "Killed in action." After all, that tells thestory. In those old-time Indian days of continuous foray and skirmish such brief returns, conciseand unheroic, were commonplace enough. Yet the tale is worth telling now, when such days are past and gone. There were sixteen ofthem when, like so many hunted rabbits, they were first securely trapped among the frowningrocks, and forced relentlessly backward from off the narrow trail until the precipitous canyonwalls finally halted their disorganized flight, and from sheer necessity compelled a rally inhopeless battle. Sixteen, -ten infantrymen from old Fort Bethune, under command of Syd. Wyman, a gray-headed sergeant of thirty years' continuous service in the regulars, two cowpunchers from the "X L" ranch, a stranger who had joined them uninvited at the ford over theBear Water, together with old Gillis the post-trader, and his silent chit of a girl