The usual rumor was circulated of Indians having attacked and plundered the next train ahead of ours, producing the usual amount of nervousness to reward the perpetrators of the hoax. Such rumors were started regularly on every train for a year or two after the road was completed, and obtained ready credence from the well-known fact that this section -- on the South Platte -- had been the most dangerous part of the old stage route. In 1866, the U. S. Mail Coach, carrying a military guard and several armed passengers, was attacked near here by a hundred mounted Sioux and Cheyennes, and escaped after a running fight of twenty miles. A private party, in prairie ambulances, just behind were not so fortunate. They lost all their stock, and took refuge in a "buffalo wallow" a few rods in circumference -- a splendid natural earth-work -- and kept the savages at bay for two days till they were relieved by a party of soldiers. Two of their number, captured by the savages, were roasted in full few of the beseiged.

But now a costly peace had been purchased, and Spot Ed. Tail and lady were guests of the Rollins House in Cheyenne. Now as we glide swiftly through the "dangerous district," a small squad of soldiers appears at every section house, drawn up to receive us, and standing at a "present," till the train has passed. Their barracks are walled to the roof with sod, and a little way off is a small sod fort, connecting with the barracks by an underground passage. Occasionally we see a group of Indians looking on from distant sand hills, and the romantic may fancy them musing sadly, or mutually indulging in lofty strains of pathos, over this curious smoke-breathing monster which is fast hastening the destruction of their race. But in prosaic fact the Indian seldom if ever thinks of such things. He is moved by a blind instinct to plunder and kill, and is not capable of a definite war policy. Not one in a hundred of the plains Indians has any conception of the comparative greatness of the white race.