RETRIBUTION
Whoever it was who planned or placed Fort Minneconjou, one blunder at least could be laid at his door—that it had enabled the enemy to "locate" almost at the door of the fort. An odd condition of things was this that resulted from the discovery of precious metals in the magnificent tract misnamed the Black Hills—black presumably only in the dead of winter, when their pine-crested peaks and ridges stood boldly against the dazzling white of the Dakota snows. In '75 the Sioux had bartered their secret to chance explorers, and Custer came down with his scouting columns and confirmed the glittering rumor. In '76 the Sioux squared accounts with Custer afar to the northwest in the affair of the Little Big Horn, but while they were about it the miner and settler swarmed in behind and staked out claims and cities from which they could never be driven, for Crook's starved horses and starving men were fortunately so numerous they kept the southward tribes of the savage confederation too busy to bother with settlers. They could be settled later, after the warriors had dealt by Crook as they did by Custer. When winter came, however, with Sitting Bull and the Uncapapas thrust beyond the British line, and Crazy Horse, raving, done to death by the steel of the guard he so magnificently defied, with Red Cloud disarmed and deposed, with Dull Knife disabled, with Lame Deer doubled up by the sturdy Fifth Infantry, and old Two Moons hiding his light in some obscure refuge of the wilderness, and the old men, the women and children herded on the reservation under the rifles of the army and the young men scattered or slain, there was nothing left for the hard-fighting, proud-spirited lords of the Hills—Ogalalla, Brulé and Minneconjou—but sullen acceptance of the great father's terms; and in this wise came Silver Hill to the heart of the fair valley, nestling under the screen of the Sagamore and its eastward spurs and the shield of Uncle Sam, who sliced off for military purposes a block from the Minneconjou reserve, and by way of compliment and consolation named the cantonment therein established after the tribe thereof dispossessed. All went swimmingly for the emigrant, the miner, the settler and the subsequent supremacy of the white man until in course of time a big post had to be built to replace the old log barracks, and from motives of economy, in order to reduce to a minimum the expense of hauling supplies and materials of the quartermaster's department, the new buildings were planted at the extreme eastern edge of the reservation, and before the first coat of paint was dry on the lintels the opposite bank of the stream, a short pistol shot from the line, was planted thick with shacks, shanties and saloons, and every known device of the devil to prey upon the soldier.
In the five years that followed, that particular quarter section of what soon became South Dakota was a storm center of villainy, especially when the bi-monthly payday came round. By scores the soldiers were drugged and robbed, by dozens they were beaten and bullied. By twos and threes they were set upon, slugged and not infrequently someone was murdered. No jury could be found in those days to convict a civilian of any crime against the life or property of a servant of Uncle Sam. There came a time when two of the best men of the garrison, veteran sergeants, having been shot to death in cold blood by a brace of desperadoes in front of Skidmore's saloon, the garrison turned out almost to a man. The murderers fled to town on the horses of their victims; fifty troopers followed, while over fifty tore Skidmore's to shreds. Silver Hill had a riot that night, in which two deputy marshals bit the dust; so did two or three troopers, but that didn't matter. The majesty of the law that turned the original murderers loose had been violated by a brutal and ungovernable soldiery, six of whom were later surrendered to be tried for their crimes by a jury of their sworn enemies, while their commanding officer was tried for his commission by a jury of his peers. The soldiers were sent to civil prison and the colonel to military Coventry—estopped from further promotion, and Silver Hill (pronounced with an "e" in those days) for as much as a month exulted and rejoiced with exceeding joy. Then a new general came to the command. Then Silver Hill thrust its hands deep in its pockets and whistled in dismay, for the general's first deed was to order Minneconjou's big garrison into summer camp long marches away, to leave only men enough at the post to take care of the property and thus to defraud the denizens of fringing settlement, known to the Army as Thugtown, of some thousands per mensem of hard-earned cash—very hard. Moreover, when winter set in, the garrison was distributed much to the betterment of Meade, Laramie, Robinson, Niobrara, etc., and to the howling protest of the sturdy settlers of Silver Hill, "thus robbed," said their eloquent representative in Congress assembled, "of the protection assured them by the national government." It was rich to hear the appalling description given that December of the perils and privations of the people of the southwestern section of the Dakotas. The Sioux were on the point of rising and butchering the helpless and scattered settlers, said Senator Bullion, and to do the county justice it must be owned that it did its level best to stir up the Minneconjous, but those "troubled waters" had been stirred too much in the past and refused now to boil over at the beck of the politicians, so what could not be done in one way was worked in another. The cat, in shape of the command, came back, and with the onward march of civilization men and women of a higher class were drawn to Silver Hill, and the "e" from the last part of its name.
And then in army circles there came to the front a man with a head on his shoulders and a hand on the steering gear. In the interest of civilization and civilian dealers Congress had cleaned out the old-time sutler shop, which was no deplorable loss, and transferred the traffic of his successor, the post trader, to his ubiquitous rival, the publican. "The soldier's pay comes from the people and should return to the people," said the advocates of the measure, and the soldier non-voter, having about as many friends at the seat of government as a crow in a corn field, matters at Minneconjou speedily became bad as ever, for, reform having started at Silver Hill, the gamblers and harpies being kicked from its corporate limits, these philosophers,—the flotsam and jetsam of the frontier,—lost little cash and less time before settling again, and in greater numbers, on the skirts of Uncle Sam.
And then it was that, after a year or two of turmoil and trouble, "in our day there lived a man" who solved the problem, dealt rum, the flesh and the devil the worst blow known to the combination, and started under the auspices of the post Exchange the common sense and only successful system ever tried in the army, known to the Press and its civilian readers by the name of the Canteen.
And then again after a few years of peace, prosperity and contentment, good order and discipline, after the man whose monument is inscribed "The Soldier's Friend," his good work finished, was gathered to his fathers, the resultant years of thought and experiment were overthrown in a day. A congress of women over-mastered a congress of men. Exit the Canteen: Re-enter the grog shop, the hell and the hog ranch. Burned out at the borders of Silver Hill, the way blazed for him and his vile retinue of swindlers and strumpets by the best intentions that ever paved the streets of sheol, back to the gates of Fort Minneconjou came the saloon and its concomitants—and the day of order and discipline was done.
"I wouldn't say a word against it," protested Colonel Stone to the grave-faced Inspector sent out from St. Paul to investigate the first killing, "if, when they shut up our shop they had shut up those!" and with clinching fist he struck savagely at empty space and the swarming row of ramshackle tenements beyond the stream. "Of what earthly good was it to anybody, I ask you,—except the distiller and dealer in liquors,—to close our guarded, homelike tables and reopen that unlimited unlicensed hell?"
A new road to Silver Hill, albeit roundabout, had become a necessity. The old well-worn beeline through by way of the ford had become impracticable for women and children and self-respecting people in general. It was skirted for some two hundred yards by tenements and tenants not easily described in these pages. The colonel had been jeered at by painted sirens at upper windows. Priscilla Sanford, starting one morning to town, turned crimson at the shrill acclaim of the scarlet sisterhood, two of whom had kissed their hands to her. Stone, when he heard of it, would have leveled the shack with the ground, but the mournful plight of his predecessor, condemned for not preventing what Stone would almost precipitate, gave him timely pause. Sandy might have sallied forth and shot somebody not feminine, but Sandy was still in arrest. The paymaster had come and gone. So had most of the money; so, worse luck, after two days of salooning, had gone no less than fifty of the garrison. In nearly two years Minneconjou had not had as many desertions as resulted from those two days.
But, sorrowful to relate, among the first to go and the last to be heard from were two of Priscilla's trusties—gone no man could say whither—and in addition to this catastrophe something had strangely, surely gone amiss with her paragon, Blenke—Blenke the scholarly, Blenke the writer and linguist—and Priscilla's world was reeling under her well-shod feet.
To begin with, how came Blenke, the impeccable, the would-be candidate for transfer to the cavalry and aspirant for commission, to be sojourning even for an hour at so disreputable a spot as Skidmore's? Blenke, it will be remembered, had a forty-eight hour pass to enable him to visit Rapid City on important personal business. Blenke was supposed to have taken the westbound Flyer on Monday—the Flyer that flew five hours late. Blenke was supposed to be spending all Tuesday, or most of it, in the heart of the Hills. Blenke was not due at the post until the afternoon of Wednesday, and was not expected to leave Rapid City until Wednesday morning; yet here he was, of all places in the world, at that hog ranch on Tuesday night. Stone sent a patrol over at 1 A. M. with a spare horse and invitation for Private Blenke to return at once and account for his eccentric orbit at office hours in the morning. The patrol trotted over, nothing loath, but Blenke had disappeared. "Gone to town for a doctor," said the abandoned few still groping about the smoldering ruins. So the patrol returned without him. It was represented that Blenke had scorched his face, singed off his eyebrows and burned his hands in his gallant essay to save the women. But this was all hearsay evidence.