Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1914-07-02
BY Edgar Beecher Bronson

even us.
A small band of Kickapoos, with
wild whoops and waving buffalo robes
ran off their horses and stampeded and
chased away the cattle, while their
main war party opened and maintain
ed heavy fire on the startled and
half awakened looters.
The Indians had even slipped in be-
tween the camp and the detail sur
rounding us, evidently. for shortly we
heard Bolen yelling for them to
charge down and take their enemy in
the rear.
For a time we fancied that the war
whoops were counterfeits and the
summons of our guards ruse to draw
us cut, but presently the heavy fire
satisfied us that the row below was
real, and that 1t offered the only
chance we were likely to get Of an
escape.
So out of our caves we led our
mounts, picked our way to the crest
of the ridge and along it to open
country, and then mounted and hit
the best pace we could in wide circle
to the north that should fetch Mus.
tang Ponds, beyond which lay the
ninety-mile dry march to the Pecos.
will not go into the details of that
march. Just to think of the suffering
it caused us makes me sick yet. Seven
of us reached the river; two of the
wounded failed to last through.
But come to the PecOs, our plight
was pitiable. We had no food but such
game as we could kill, and no salt for
that; no ammunition but the little re-
naming after our scrap with Bolen's
gang; no horses but the exhausted
wrecks that had carried us across the
mesquit-thickets that line the river,
We had to stay three days, resting
beasts and men.
The jump from Horsehead Crossing
to Comanche Springs was another
forty miles without water, and on it
we started shortly after midnight,
travelling by the stars g. 49,
Daylight arrived, we Kept "A close
lookout, for we were crossing favorite
stamping-ground Of the Comanches,
and, while our horszs were again fairly
fresh, We had scant ammunition for a
long fight.
We were not greatly surprised,
therefore, when from a ridge that
looked out across a wide valley that
led up to the spring a long column of
at least two or three hundred Indians
appeared, trailing teepees and children
bucks and squaws mounted. heading
in toward the spring from the direc-
ton Of old Camp Lancaster. '''..
Instantly We ducked back out OF
sight and did the only thing we could
do-struck an easy lope north toward
Phantom Lake, hoping we had not
been seen.
Phantom Lake was then known to
only one of our party-one of Patter.
sons men who had there escaped an
attack of Indians A queer place, as
he described it and as we found it.
At the foot of a low, white lime
stone stiff lay a deep lake, perhaps
seventy-five yards in diameter, fed by
great stream fifteen feet wide and
no one knows of what depth, which
runs from cave. e....5
At It's entrance the cave has a height
above the stream Of no more than Six
feet, but within opens into lofty cham
bers whose roofs are lost in the g,oom
and connected by low, narrow pas
sages.
What the spread of the chambers
below water-level may be is matter Of
conjecture. for catch by the hands on
jutting points of the wall and try to
reach a footing, and one finds his feet
and legs drawn deep in behind the line
of the wall. In the first chamber and
we'll to one side, out of line with the
entrance, are some broad lodges, or
benches, upon which swimmer may
climb.
There are two things about that lake
which, doubtless, have served to give
it it's name. 1t must be bottomless,
for it's level never rises, nOtwithstand-
ing the young river constantly pouring
into it; and the chambers within are
crowded with millions Of bats that,
when disturbed by venturesome
swimmer whirl about awning until the
air is fairly solid with them and with
noise that, heard for the first time by
one unwarned, which would stampede
him into the outer light never to re-
turn unless the world without held for
him greater known terrors than the
unknown horrors lurking in the dark
ness of The caves inner recesses.