In buckskin trousers, fringed and beaded, but much the worse for wear, in ragged old hunting-shirt and shapeless hat, none but the initiated would recognize Milwaukee, much less West Point, in that adjutant. But he was marker of our Light Guard years before the war, and the first member of its corps of drummer boys. He is just speeding a grim-looking cavalryman, one of the headquarters orderlies, off with a despatch to General Merritt, and that orderly is a Milwaukeean, too, and may have to "run the gauntlet" getting that message through; but his face, what you can see of it through grizzled hair and beard, looks unconcerned enough; and under the weather-stained exterior he is known to be a faithful old soldier—one who loves the rough life better than he did the desk in ante bellum days when he was clerking at Hathaway & Belden's. "Old George," as the men call him, ran a train on the Watertown road, too, once upon a time, but about the close of the war he drifted from the volunteers into the regulars, and there he has stuck ever since.
But all this time Crook is marching away faster than we can back and follow him. We have to keep those howling devils beyond range of the main column, absorb their attention, pick up our wounded as we go, and be ready to give the warriors a welcome when they charge.
Kellogg, with Company "I," has driven back the attempted turn of our right, but the Indians keep up their harassing attack from the rear. Time is precious, and Upham begins to think we are wasting it. Again the adjutant has come to him from General Carr, and now is riding along the line to the right, communicating some order to the officers, while Lieutenant Bishop is doing the same on the left. Just as the skirmishers cross the next ridge a few cool old shots from each company drop on hands and knees, and, crawling back to the crest, open a rapid fire on the pursuers, checking them. Covered by this the main line sweeps down at a run, crosses the low, boggy ground between them, and toils up the ridge on which we are stationed. Here they halt, face about, throw themselves flat on their faces, and the major signals to the outlying skirmishers to come in; they obey with a rush, and a minute after a mass of Indians pops over the divide in pursuit. With a ringing hurrah of exultation our line lets drive a volley, the astonished redskins wheel about, those who can, lugging with them the dead or wounded who have fallen, and scatter off under shelter.
"How's that, King?" says the major, with a grin. "Think they've had enough?" Apparently they have, as none reappear except in distant groups. Mount is the word. Ranks are formed, the men chat and laugh a moment, as girths and stirrups are being rearranged, then silence and attention as they break into column and jog off after Crook's distant battalions.
The adjutant is jotting down the list of casualties in his note-book. "What time is it, major?" "Eight o'clock," says Upham, wringing the wet from his hat. "Eight o'clock here; church-time in Milwaukee."
Who would have thought it was Sunday?
CHAPTER X.
"BUFFALO BILL" AND "BUFFALO CHIPS."
In all these years of campaigning, the Fifth Cavalry has had varied and interesting experiences with a class of men of whom much has been written, and whose names, to readers of the dime novel and New York Weekly style of literature, were familiar as household words; I mean the "Scouts of the Prairie," as they have been christened. Many a peace-loving citizen and thousands of our boys have been to see Buffalo Bill's thrilling representations on the stage of the scenes of his life of adventure. To such he needs no introduction, and throughout our cavalry he is better known than any general except Crook.