At Fort Wingate the real hardships of the trip began in an unexpected manner.  Instead of being plentifully supplied with provisions, as had been reported, the post was found to be very poorly provided, and all that could be spared to the engineers were condemned quartermaster’s stores.  The party must take these or nothing; and when Mr. Hobart left it to his men whether they should accept the damaged stores and push on, or go back to the Rio Grande, they unanimously said, “Go on!” So, for the next two months, they made the best of half-spoiled hams and bacon, hard-tack filled with white worms, and sugar abounding in little black bugs, that fortunately floated on top of the coffee and could be skimmed off.

The men provided themselves with a number of little luxuries at the sutler’s ­the last store they would see for months ­and “Billy” Brackett bought a cheese.  This was considered a very queer purchase; but Glen’s was queerer still, for it was a small quantity of strychnine.  He only procured this after giving assurances that he did not propose to commit suicide and making many promises to be very careful in its use.  What he proposed to do with the poison he did not confide to anybody except his friend “Billy” Brackett, who agreed with him that it was a capital plan.

A run of twelve miles from Fort Wingate brought the party to a camp, in a forest of the most stately yellow-pines they had ever seen, beside a great spring of ice-cold water ­known as the Agua Fria (cold water).  Here, as soon as supper was over, Glen proceeded to put his great plan into execution.  The nights were now very cold, and the boy generally woke before morning to find himself shivering beneath his insufficient covering of blankets.  Every night, too, since entering the mountains the party had been annoyed by the sneaking visits and unearthly howlings of wolves that hung on the outskirts of the camp from dark to daylight, every now and then making a quick dash through it, if the guard was not watching sharply, and snatching at bits of food or at anything made of leather that lay in their path.  So Glen thought he would teach the wolves a lesson, which should at the same time add some of their skins to his bed-clothing; and it was for this purpose he had procured the strychnine.

Now, with “Billy” Brackett’s help, he dragged out from one of the wagons a gunny-sack, containing some kidneys, lungs, and other refuse animal matter, obtained from the Fort Wingate butcher, and these he smeared with the deadly powder.  Then they prepared several torches of pine slivers, and, amid the unanswered questionings of their companions, left camp, carrying the sack of meat between them.  Beginning at a point a few rods from the tents, they strewed the poisoned bait for half a mile along the banks of the little stream flowing from the spring.  It was an exciting task, for they seemed to hear suspicious sniffs, and the soft pattering of feet on both sides of them; while Glen felt certain that his torchlight was reflected from gleaming eyeballs more than once.  So greatly did these things work upon their imaginations that when, as they started back towards camp, their last torch suddenly went out, leaving them in blackest darkness, they both took to their heels, and raced breathlessly for the distant light of the friendly camp-fire.  When they reached it, in perfect safety, they burst out laughing in one another’s faces, and wondered what they had run from.

Glen was disappointed, as he lay shivering in his blankets that night, not to hear so many wolves as usual, while the few howls that did reach his ears seemed to come from a distance.  Still, he comforted himself with the reflection that dead wolves couldn’t howl, and doubtless all those that had ventured near the camp had eaten the poisoned meat, and had their howlings effectually silenced.

It seemed to him that he had hardly dropped asleep when he was rudely awakened by being pulled, feet foremost, out of his blankets, under the side of the tent, and into the open air.  At the same moment “Billy” Brackett’s laughing voice cried, “Come, Glen, here it is broad daylight, and high time we were gathering in our wolves.”

Whew! how cold it was! and in what a hurry Glen sprang from the frozen ground, to rush back into the tent for his boots and army overcoat.  He had everything else on, for there was very little undressing at night in that party.  As for being sleepy, the biting air had awakened him as effectually as a dash of ice-water.

As they left camp, “Billy” Brackett shouted back to one of the Mexican axemen to follow after them, and the man answered that he would be along in a minute.  It was light enough, when they reached the place where they had left the first of the poisoned meat, for them to see it if it had been there; but it was not.  Neither was there any dead wolf to be found in the vicinity.  It was the same along the whole line, where they had scattered their bait.  They could neither discover meat nor wolves.

“Hello!” exclaimed “Billy” Brackett softly, as they were about to turn back, “I believe the wolves are cooking their meat;” and with that he pointed to a thin column of blue smoke rising through the trees at some distance farther down the stream.

“Perhaps they are Indians,” suggested Glen.

“Perhaps they are.  Let’s go and find out.  We can take a look at them without being seen.  Besides, the Indians hereabout are peaceful now.”

So they crept cautiously towards the smoke, until at length they were lying flat on the ground, on the edge of a low bank, with their heads hidden in tufts of grass, peering into a small encampment of Indians just below them.  They had hardly gained this position when Glen, uttering a cry of horror, sprang down the bank, rushed in among the Indians, and, snatching a piece of meat from the hands of one of them, who was raising it to his mouth, flung it so far away that it was snapped up and swallowed by a lean, wolfish-looking cur, that had not dared venture near the fire.

At Glen’s sudden appearance the Indian women and children ran screaming into the bushes, while the men, springing to their feet, surrounded him with angry exclamations and significant handlings of their knives.  They received a second surprise, and fell back a little as “Billy” Brackett, who had not at first understood Glen’s precipitate action, came rushing down the bank after him, shouting, “Stand back, you villains!  If you lay a hand on him, I’ll blow the tops of all your heads off!”

At the same time Glen was making all the faces expressive of extreme disgust that he could think of, and saying, as he pointed to a pile of meat lying in a gunny-sack beside the fire: 

“Carne no bueno!  Muy mal!  No bueno por hombre!” which was the best Spanish he knew for, “The meat is not good.  It is very bad, and not at all good for a man to eat.”

But the Indians could not understand.  The meat might not be good enough for white men, who were so very particular, but it was good enough for them.  The white men had thrown it away and they had found it.  They meant to eat it, too, for they were very hungry.  Now, if these uninvited guests to their camp would not clear out and let them eat their breakfast in peace, they must suffer the consequences.

This is what they said; but neither Glen nor “Billy” Brackett understood a word of it.  They were preparing to defend themselves, as well as they could, from the scowling Indians, who were again advancing upon them with drawn knives.

Both Glen and his companion had their rifles, and now, as they stepped slowly backward, they held them ready for instant use.

“We won’t fire,” said “Billy” Brackett, “unless they point a gun or an arrow at us; for the first shot will be the signal for a rush, and if they make that we haven’t got a living show.”

All this time the Indians, to the number of a dozen or so, advanced steadily, taking step for step with the whites, as they fell back, and watching for a chance to get past or around the black muzzles of those rifles.