CHAPTER XIII. Colonel Carrington Is Depressed
"I would like a chance to kick that Winged Arrow, or whatever else he calls himself," said Colonel Carrington, as he returned Captain Kendall's salute and saw him mount his horse and lead his forty men through the gate to escort the teamsters to their post of duty. "He had no business to give Guy Preston that letter. He has thrown the whole garrison into a panic. Every man believes that a massacre is coming, and, to tell the honest truth, I really begin to believe it myself."
"Well," said Colonel Fetterman, as he walked with the commanding officer to a prominent place on the palisades from which they could keep watch of the train and its escort, "I don't see but that the latter has done some good after all. It has returned your best scout to you when everybody thought he was a doomed man."
"That's so," replied the Colonel, after thinking the matter over. "Perhaps in that respect it has been of some use after all; and I am going to try it again."
Colonel Fetterman was somewhat surprised, but said nothing in answer to this proposition. The commanding officer had things his own way out there on the prairie, and it was not for him to offer any amendments until he was asked to give them.
"If the Sioux pitch into us, as I really believe they will, they will hold a big jubilee in their camp to-night, no matter whether they whip us or not. That will be the time for me to get a letter through; don't you think so?"
"Yes, sir, that will be the time, if any," said Colonel Fetterman, thinking of what Cyrus would have to go through with before he could get the letter safe into the hands of their superior officer who could grant the re-enforcements for which they asked. "Are you going to try the letter on again?"
"I am, and Cyrus is waiting to see how the fight comes out before he makes the start. Now we must keep that train in sight as long as we can," said the Colonel, pulling his binoculars from its case. "The trouble is that we cannot see them after they get into a fight."
"We shall have to depend upon the picket tower after they have disappeared from our view," said Colonel Fetterman. "My command has been informed and is all ready to start."
"I hope I shall not have to send you out," said the Colonel honestly. "They are all good men in that escort, and I think they ought to come through."
The commanding officer seated himself and awaited the issue of events with his feelings worked up to the highest point at which they could go and not drive him wholly frantic. He knew that some of his men were going to their death, but he had expected that. Not one wagon train had ever gone out from that Fort after fuel but it had always come back and reported that the Sioux had fired into them, and that so many were dead and so many wounded. But there was one thing that he always thought of with satisfaction: the train always brought their dead and wounded back with them. They left none of them for the Indians to maltreat after they had gone. The two officers saw the train when it reached the signal tower, and the men who had been on watch there for twenty-four hours were relieved by Lieutenant Preston and his squad. Five minutes more and the wagons were out of sight.
"There now," said the Colonel. "Half an hour more will tell the story."
"Yes, and I might as well get ready to move when I get your orders," said Colonel Fetterman. "You are bound to give them and I know it."
"Let us hope not, Colonel; let us hope not. It seems as though I ought to have more men than I can muster to send out there. It is like sending a boy to mill."
The officers relapsed into silence and sat with their glasses to their eyes watching the signal tower. It came in a good deal less than half an hour. It seemed to them that the wagon train had scarcely got out of sight before the white flag, with a star in the middle of it, began to wave frantically from the top of the picket tower: "About one hundred Indians going to attack the train."
"All ready with that gun down there?" shouted the Colonel, jumping to his feet.
"All ready, sir," was the response.
"Fire!" was the next order; and a five-second shell flew over the tower and away to the further end of the ridge.
"All ready with that other gun? Fire!"
The guns on that side of the Fort were fired in quick succession, and when the smoke cleared away the flag was seen flying again from the top of the tower: "You are firing entirely too high. Shoot closer to the ground."
"Depress those guns a couple of points and fire away," said the Colonel. "That boy is keeping a close watch of the way the shells are going. I wish he had a gun up there so that he could try his own hand at it."
The guns spoke again, and this time the answer that came back was encouraging. "That is all right. You stand a chance of hitting them now."
"One would think that boy was a commanding officer," said the Colonel. "I hope we have the right range of them now."
This is all that was said in regard to Guy Preston's orders which came all unasked. He saw that the shells were flying all too wild, and did not hesitate to say so. Guy would have felt a great deal better if he had known just what was thought of it.
"Shall I go now sir?" asked Colonel Fetterman.
"Yes, I guess you had better," said Colonel Carrington sadly. "A hundred Indians is most too many for those forty men to handle. Remember, George, I depend entirely upon you. I will bid you good-by now. I will see you start from here."
The two officers shook one another by the hand, and that was the last time they ever met. Colonel Carrington did not want to go down to see him off. Fetterman was a brave man and an Indian fighter, but somehow the Colonel did not feel right about letting him go. Fetterman became all activity at once. He sprang down from the platform upon which he was standing, shouting: "Fall in, my men!" and disappeared in his room. When he came out he had his sword and revolver, and mounting his horse, which was ready for him by this time, he rode up and down in front of his men, who were rapidly forming in line, and urged them all to make haste.
"There are a hundred Indians out there and we are going for them," he shouted, swinging his sword around his head. "They will stand just long enough to see us getting ready for a charge, and then they will run. You are not afraid of a hundred Indians, are you?"
"Not by a great sight, sir," said the Sergeant, who was riding down the other side of the line pushing the men into their places. "Get in there, men, and be lively about it. Lead on, sir. We are ready to face five hundred, if you say so."
"All ready, sir," said Colonel Fetterman, riding up to the palisades where he had left his commanding officer.
"Go on," was the response. He raised his hand and waved it in the air, but could say no more. Colonel Fetterman wheeled his horse, gave the commands, "Fours right. Forward march!" and rode through the gate and turned toward the picket tower; and Colonel Carrington could only settle back in his camp chair and wait to see what events were going to bring forth.
"Something tells me that I will never see those men again," said he, turning to Major Powell, who at that moment stepped upon the platform and took a stand beside his Colonel. "I have shaken hands with Colonel Fetterman for the last time."
"Oh, Colonel, I would not talk in that way," said the Major. "Fetterman is an old Indian fighter, and it will take more than one hundred Sioux to clean him out."
"But a hundred warriors are not all they can bring into a fight," said the Colonel. "If Cyrus tells the truth, there must be a larger village than we are aware of situated behind those swells."
"Well, suppose there are a thousand of them; Fetterman can easily beat them off until he can come within range of the Fort. He has taken Captain Brown, Tony, and Mike, and three or four old Indian fighters with him, and they are bound to come out with flying colors."
The Colonel said no more, but watched the re-enforcements. He saw them break into a trot and then into a gallop, and very shortly they disappeared over the swells.
"I am a little afraid of an ambush down where they are," said the Colonel, after a few moments pause. "If Fetterman runs into it, we are gone."
"But Fetterman will not run into it. He has too much at stake for that."
Major Powell's words were intended to be encouraging, and in almost any other case they would have been so; but this time they did not have any effect upon the Colonel. He was disheartened before he sent him off to face that unknown danger, and now that he was out of sight and almost within sight of it, he felt more distress than ever he did before.
"Why don't they signal to me?" he exclaimed, when he had watched the top of the tower in vain for a sign of the white flag. "I want to know what is going on there."
"Probably there has nothing happened yet," said the Major. "If the Indians are retreating——"
The Major suddenly paused, for at that moment the flag came into view from the top of the tower. He paused to read the signal it conveyed and as he spelled it slowly out that there were large bodies of Indians who were assaulting the re-enforcements, the Colonel jumped to his feet and seized the flag that lay near him.
"I think you said that Fetterman would not run into an ambush, if there was one formed for him," said he angrily. "He is in it now."
Then went up the signal from the Fort: "Tell them not to leave the ridge," but it was a signal that came too late to be of any use. Colonel Fetterman and all his men were so busy at that time charging down upon the enemy, that no one thought of looking for signals in their rear. But Guy saw and understood and did his best to turn the column to a place of safety, but the waving of his flag was time and strength wasted. With a yell, which Guy had often helped raise when the troops were drilling on the parade ground, and which the men now gave in order to let the Sioux know they were coming to save the wagon train, they charged down the ridge and into the ambush. It was too late to do anything then, and Colonel Carrington leaned back in his camp chair and looked at Powell. Not another word was said by either of them, and pretty soon there came another signal from the tower: "Fetterman needs re-enforcements."
"It will take the last hundred men I have, and the Fort with every one in it will be at their mercy," said the Colonel. "You will have to go with them. Go down and call the men together——"
"Colonel, with your permission I will protest against sending them any help," said the Major. "The Colonel may be retreating, but he is retreating toward the ridge where he knows he will be comparatively safe. I tell you that man can't be whipped."
"Well, we will wait and see," said the Colonel. "I hope he has men enough with him to resist them, but I am afraid. I think I should have sent more."
"And if you had, you would certainly have left the Fort at the mercy of the thievish Sioux. You have done the best you could. Leave Fetterman alone. He is going to come out all right."
If Major Powell believed this, he was certainly doomed to be disappointed. Colonel Fetterman was whipped almost at the start, and there was no one to lend him a helping hand. In response to the signals "How goes the battle?" the reply was the same as it had always been, "He needs re-enforcements," and then Colonel Carrington got up and paced the platform in agony. The help was repeatedly called for and several times the Colonel was on the point of exerting his authority as post commander and sending the re-enforcements that Colonel Fetterman so much needed; but each time the calm voice of Major Powell was raised in protest, and the commander thought it best to wait a little longer and see how the fight was coming out.
"It seems to me that Fetterman has been allowed all the time he wanted to get back to the ridge and hold the Sioux at bay," he often said. "Do you not think so, Major?"
It was almost half an hour since the signal had been made that the Sioux were attacking the re-enforcements, and something should have been done in that time; but the next signal that was made fairly took his breath away: "All killed. Field covered with more than a thousand Sioux."
"Oh, heavens and earth!" groaned Colonel Carrington. "I wish I had died before I had seen that signal."
Major Powell turned away to hide the tears that streamed from his eyes, and could not say a word in reply. He had protested against the sending out of help, and he would do it again under the same circumstances; but at what cost? Fully a third of the men that composed the garrison had been sacrificed, and surely that was better than to send out another hundred to share the same fate. Colonel Carrington buried his face in his hands, and it did not seem to him that he could ever look up again; while Major Powell, after subduing the first violence of his grief, raised his eyes to watch the tower again and saw another signal waving to them.
"The wagon train is coming, having beaten off its assailants," said he. "If we can save that much, we will do well."
This aroused the Colonel, who caught up the flag and signaled to them not to attack, but to make all haste into the Fort.
"If they get back safe it will give me a hundred and ten men to send out to that battlefield," said he, after thinking a moment. "You will have to go with them. Don't leave the ridge until you see that you are sufficiently strong to hold them at bay."
"But you want me to go to the battlefield," said the Major.
"But don't go into that ambush whatever you do. Steer clear of that. Bring the bodies of all the men you can find with you."
Then the Colonel relapsed into his melancholy mood again, and Major Powell knew that he had to do everything that was necessary for getting the relief party under way, and he lost no time in doing it either. While he was thus engaged, the gate flew open and the wagon train, well loaded with fuel, came in with a rush. A more frightened set than the teamsters were it would have been hard to find, and even the old soldiers, who had passed through more than one Indian fight, were heard to draw a long breath of relief as they came into line.
"Oh, Major, it was just awful!" said the Lieutenant, who was the first to salute him.
"Fetterman has gone up," said Captain Kendall; and there were traces of tears on his face that he was not ashamed of. "I never saw so many Sioux before. Where's the Colonel?"
"Up there on the platform," said the Major. "Go up and report to him. And, mind you, don't say anything to him that will make him feel worse than he does now, for he is completely prostrated."
"But I shall have to tell him the truth, or I might as well stay away from him," protested the Captain. "It was nothing that he could help, but we are just a hundred men short."
The Major, who did not want to hear any more about the fight until he saw the battlefield, waved his hand toward the Colonel, and the Captain dismounted and went to report the disaster of which the post commander knew almost as much as he did.
"It is not necessary for you to say anything, Captain," said he. "The signals from the tower have kept me posted. Are they all gone? Is there not one left?"
"Not one, Colonel," said Captain Kendall. "From where I stood on the ridge, I could not see anything but Sioux."
"They were retreating?" said the Colonel.
"Toward the ridge where they would be safe; but they didn't any of them live to get there. They were wiped out completely."
"You lost some men, I suppose."
"We lost seven, and were glad to get off with that. Shall I break ranks, sir?"
"Yes; and then come up and talk to me. I feel as though I were going crazy. I have sent out some men to go to that battlefield. Do you think they can go there without another fight?"
"Perhaps so, sir. We killed any number of them, and perhaps they have got all they want of fighting."
The Captain went down and said something to his men before he broke ranks, and it made them feel a great deal better for what they had done; but there was one thing that they never could blot from their minds. There was that battlefield, a mile long and half a mile wide, of which they had a plain view as they passed along the ridge, covered by the bodies of men whom they would never shake by the hand again, and the memory of it would disturb their sleep for many a night afterward. While this was going on and the Colonel sat listening to his speech, Amos Billings, the officer who Guy Preston had relieved in command of the tower, came up to the commander and saluted him.
"What is it, Billings?" said he. "I can't ask you to sit down, for there is no place."
"I don't want to stop, sir," he replied. "There are our boys alone in that tower—"
"And you want to go out and inform them that they are not forgotten by the garrison, do you? Well, go on. Take a cavalryman with you to hold your horse. Tell Guy that I would have answered his signal for re-enforcements, but Major Powell told me that I ought not to. Guy did his duty up to the handle."
This was what Billings wanted to tell Guy, while they were sitting there on the steps that led to the top of the tower.