The situation is romantic, but disagreeable. Some of us sleep rather restlessly that night, and one and all welcome the dawn of the 8th. It is more than chilly in the keen morning air, but we march northward in a thick, smoky haze that utterly obscures the landscape. We can see but a short fifty yards in any direction, and the deeper we ride into it the thicker and more suffocating it becomes. Four or five miles down stream, still riding through the lately occupied camps, we bump up against the rear of the column ahead. An aide leads us off to the left, and informs General Carr that there is good grazing in some little breaks and ravines—to unsaddle and give the horses a chance while we wait for reports from the scouts. Here we "loaf" through the entire day, when suddenly the signal to saddle and mount startles us at six p.m., just as we were thinking of going to sleep. We march very rapidly, six, seven, ten miles, and then darkness sets in. Thicker darkness I never encountered. Men pull out their pipes and whiff away at them till the glow of their sparks looks like a long trail of tiny furnace fires, and gives us a clue to follow. No one but an Indian who has lived among these valleys all his life can be guiding us to-night. At nine o'clock the men are singing darky melodies and Irish songs; and it is not until 10.30 that we file past bivouac fires lighted in a deep bend of the stream, grope our way out to an invisible front, and, fairly hobbling and half-lariating our horses, throw ourselves down by them to sleep. Captain Rodgers is notified that he and Company "A" are "for guard;" and, for a man who cannot or will not swear, Rodgers manages to express his disgust appropriately.
A slight sprinkling of rain comes on at daybreak, and we see the infantry hurrying off northward through the misty light. We soon follow down the right bank, the Fifth Cavalry leading the column of horse. Stanton tells us that a large body of Sioux are not more than four days ahead—were here in force not four days ago. It is easy to see that we are on the trail of an immense number of Indians—eight to ten thousand—but we judge it to be a fortnight old. At 9.15 a cold, driving rain sets in, and whirls in our faces as we march. At two p.m. we bivouac again, and begin to growl at this will-o'-the-wisp business. The night, for August, is bitter cold. Ice forms on the shallow pools close to shore, and Captain Adam, who commands the guard, declares that the thermometer was at zero at daybreak. "What thermometer?" is the question. "Vell, any thermometer as was tam fool enough to get here—un'stand?" is our veteran's characteristic reply, and it puts us in better humor. Stiff and cold when we march at seven o'clock on the 10th, we have not long to suffer from that cause. A bright sun pours down in recompense. We march five miles, halt, and graze awhile; then push on again along a broad, beaten trail over which countless hordes of ponies must have recently passed. Thick clouds of dust rise high above the bluffs on either side; the valley opens out wide and rolling east and west. Here the Indian flight has been so rapid that the work of destruction is incomplete, and the grass is excellent in many a spot. "The grandest country in the world for Indian and buffalo now," says General Carr. "Two years hence it will be the grandest place for cattle."
We of the Fifth are marching down the left or western bank of the Rosebud to-day, somewhat independently as regards the rest of the cavalry brigade, which, following the infantry, is away across the valley, close under the slopes and hillsides towards the east. About nine in the morning, while I am profiting by a ten-minute halt to jot in my note-book some of the surrounding topographical features, my orderly and myself climb to the top of the ridge on our left, from which a good view of the country is to be had. Just here the valley runs northeast, and we have been pursuing that general direction for the last day's march; but right ahead, some two thousand yards, a tall bluff juts out into the valley from the west. The river sweeps round its base in a broad fringe of cottonwoods, and disappears from sight for six or eight miles; then, over an intervening range, I see it again, away to the north, making straight for what must be the valley of the Yellowstone. Between that great bend of the river and the distant bluffs on the eastern side, a broad plain, scorched and blistered by sun and Indian fire, stretches away some two or three miles in width. This side of the bend the slopes gradually near the stream, and the picture below me is a very pretty one. Right under our ridge the Fifth Cavalry, in long column, is just preparing to remount and move on. A mile away to the eastward are our brethren of the Second and Third; a quarter of a mile ahead of them, the compact battalion of infantry. Here and there groups of horses, men, and a fluttering flag indicate the positions in march of Generals Crook and Merritt. Half a mile in advance of all, those little dots of horsemen are our scouts, while, anyhow and everywhere, in no order whatsoever, our Crows and Shoshones are scattered along the column on one flank, while the pack-mules kick up a thick dust on the other. The cloud of dust, in fact, rises from the whole column, and extends way back up the Rosebud, and even as I am wondering how far it can be seen, my eye is attracted by just as thick a cloud around the point, apparently coming up the valley. What the mischief can that be?
Answering our eager signals, General Carr comes hurriedly up the slope and levels his glass. It is dust, sure enough, and lots of it. Nothing but an immense concourse of four-footed animals could raise such a cloud. "Forward!" is the order; "Indians or buffalo?" is the query. "Ride over and report it to General Merritt," says my colonel to me. So "Donnybrook" strikes a rapid lope, and we pick our way through the cottonwoods, over the stream and up the low bank on the other side, where the first thing that meets my eyes is a grand hullabaloo among the Indians, our allies. They are whooping and yelling, throwing blankets and superfluous clothing to the ground—stripping for a fight, evidently—and darting to and fro in wild excitement. Beyond them the troops are massing in close column behind some low bluffs, and, looking back, I see the Fifth coming rapidly through the stream to join them. Evidently my news is no news to General Merritt; but the message is delivered all the same, and I get permission to gallop ahead towards the scouts and see what's coming. I make for a bluff just on the edge of the plain I have described, and, nearing it, can see farther and farther around the great bend. Our scouts and Indians are dashing around in circles, and cautiously approaching the turn. Another minute and I have reached the bluff, and there get a grand view of the coming host. Indians! I should say so—scores of them, darting about in equal excitement to our own. But no Indians are they who keep in close column along that fringe of trees; no Indians are they whose compact squadrons are moving diagonally out across the broad plain, taking equal intervals, then coming squarely towards us at a rapid trot. Then look! Each company, as it comes forward, opens out like the fan of practised coquette, and a sheaf of skirmishers is launched to the front. Something in the snap and style of the whole movement stamps them at once. There is no need of fluttering guidon and stirring trumpet-call to identify them; I know the Seventh Cavalry at a glance, and swing my old campaign hat in delighted welcome. Behind them are the solid regiments of Miles and Gibbon, and long trains of wagons and supplies. It is General Terry and his whole array, and our chiefs ride forward to greet them. And then it is that the question is asked, in comical perplexity, "Why, where on earth are the Indians?" Except our allies, none are in sight. They have slipped away between us.
CHAPTER VII.
AWAY TO THE YELLOWSTONE.
Never before, and never since, has the valley of the Rosebud beheld such a gathering as was there to be seen on that brilliant 10th of August, 1876—brilliant, that is to say, as nature could make it, for in General Crook's command, at least, there was nothing of embellishment. The war of the Revolution, the huts of Valley Forge, never exhibited so sombre an array of soldiery as we presented when General Terry and his brigade confronted us at the great bend.
It may be said that we were surprised at the meeting, and it can be established that they were astonished. Marching up the valley, General Terry was in daily expectation of finding a mass of Indians in his front. At latest accounts they were in strong force—in thousands, no doubt—between him and General Crook's position at the base of the Big Horn, and he commenced his aggressive move with every precaution, and with supplies for a long and stirring campaign. He had with him a complete wagon train, tents and equipage of every description. We had a few days' bacon and hard-tack, coffee and sugar, and a whole arsenal of ammunition on our mules, but not a tent, and only one blanket apiece. He had artillery in the shape of a few light field-pieces, and was making slow, cautious advances up the Rosebud at the rate of eight or ten miles a day. He had not come upon a single recent Indian "sign," yet knew that the country to the south must have been full of them within the fortnight. So when his scouts reported an immense cloud of dust coming down the valley above the bend, and his Indian allies began the same absurd gyrations and uproar which we had observed in ours, he very naturally supposed that a horde of hostiles was sweeping down to the attack, and made his dispositions accordingly.
It was my good-fortune to be in our advance, and to witness the beautiful deployment of the Seventh Cavalry over the plains in our front, and it is hard to say which side would have whipped if we had not discovered that neither was Sioux. A report gained credence later in the day that Dr. Clements, Crook's medical director, said that it would be Sioux-icidal to fight under the circumstances; but his friends believed that this eruptiveness was due to professional disappointment at the non-employment of himself and his able assistants, and the matter was hushed up.