Now our whole attention was given to the recuperation of our horses—the cavalryman's first thought. Each day we moved camp a few miles up the lovely Whitewood valley, seeking fresh grass for the animals, and on September 18th we marched through the little hamlet of Crook City, and bivouacked again in a beautiful amphitheatre of the hills, called Centennial Park. From here, dozens of the officers and men wandered off to visit the mining gulches and settlements in the neighborhood, and numbers were taken prisoners by the denizens of Deadwood and royally entertained. General Crook and his staff, with a small escort, had left us early on the morning of the 16th, to push ahead to Fort Laramie and set about the organization of a force for immediate resumption of business. This threw General Merritt in command of the expedition, and meant that our horses should become the objects of the utmost thought and care. Leaving Centennial Park on the 19th, we marched southward through the Hills, and that afternoon came upon a pretty stream named, as many another is throughout the Northwest, the Box Elder, and there we met a train of wagons, guarded by spruce artillerymen fresh from their casemates on the seaboard, who looked upon our rags with undisguised astonishment, not unmixed with suspicion. But they were eagerly greeted, and that night, for the first time in four long weeks, small measures of oats and corn were dealt out to our emaciated animals. It was touching to see how carefully and tenderly the rough-looking men spread the precious morsels before their steeds, petting them the while, and talking as fond nonsense to their faithful friends as ever mother crooned to sleeping child. It was only a bite for the poor creatures, and their eyes begged wistfully for more. We gave them two nights' rest, and then, having consumed all the grass to be had, pushed on to Rapid Creek, thence again to the southern limits of the Hills, passing through many a mining camp or little town with a name suggestive of the wealth and population of London. We found Custer City a deserted village—many a store and dozens of houses utterly untenanted. No forage to be had for love or money. Our horses could go no farther, so for weeks we lay along French Creek, moving camp every day or two a mile or more for fresh grass. It was dull work, but the men enjoyed it; they were revelling in plenty to eat and no drills, and every evening would gather in crowds around the camp-fires, listening to some favorite vocalist or yarn-spinner. Once in a while letters began to reach us from anxious ones at home, and make us long to see them; and yet no orders came, no definite prospects of relief from our exile. At last, the second week in October started us out on a welcome raid down the valley of the South Cheyenne, but not an Indian was caught napping, and finally, on the 23d of October, we were all concentrated in the vicinity of the Red Cloud Agency to take part in the closing scene of the campaign and assist in the disarming and unhorsing of all the reservation Indians.
General MacKenzie, with the Fourth Cavalry and a strong force of artillery and infantry, was already there, and as we marched southward to surround the Indian camps and villages from the direction of Hat Creek our array was not unimposing, numerically. The infantry, with the "weak-horsed" cavalry, moved along the prairie road. Colonel Royall's command (Third Cavalry and Noyes's Battalion of the Second) was away over to the eastward, and well advanced, so as to envelope the doomed villages from that direction. We of the Fifth spread out over the rolling plain to the west, and in this order all moved towards Red Cloud, twenty odd miles away. It was prettily planned, but scores of wary, savage eyes had watched all Crook's preparations at the agency. The wily Indian was quick to divine that his arms and ponies were threatened, and by noon we had the dismal news by courier that they had stampeded in vast numbers. We enjoyed the further satisfaction of sighting with our glasses the distant clouds of dust kicked up by their scurrying ponies. A few hundred warriors, old men and "blanket Indians," surrendered to MacKenzie, but we of the Big Horn were empty-handed when once more we met our brigadier upon the following day.
CHAPTER XV.
DROPPED STITCHES.
Now that an unlooked-for interest has been developed in this enterprise of the Sunday Sentinel, and that in accordance with the wishes of many old comrades these sketches are reproduced in a little volume by themselves, many and many an incident is recalled which deserves to be noted, but which was omitted for fear of wearying the readers for whom alone these stories of campaign life were originally intended, so that in this closing and retrospective chapter there will be nothing of lively interest, except to those already interested, and it can be dropped right here.
Looking back over it all, more especially the toilsome march and drenching bivouacs that followed the departure from Heart River, I wonder how some men stood it as they did. Among our own officers in the Fifth, one of our best and cheeriest comrades was Lieutenant Bache, "a fellow of infinite jest," and one to whom many of us were greatly attached. He was a martyr to acute rheumatism when he overtook us with Captains Price and Payne, at the headquarters of the Mini Pusa. By the time we met General Terry on the Rosebud, he was in such agonizing helplessness as to be unable to ride a horse, and was ordered to the Yellowstone and thence to Chicago for medical treatment; but while we lay at the mouth of the Powder River he suddenly reappeared in our midst, and, greatly benefited by the two weeks of rest and dry clothes on the boat, he insisted that he was well enough to resume duty. The surgeons shook their heads, but Bache carried his point with General Crook, and was ordered to rejoin the regiment. Then came day after day of pitiless, pouring rain, night after night unsheltered on the sodden ground. A cast-iron constitution would have suffered; poor Bache broke down, and, unable to move hand or foot, was lifted into a travois and dragged along. When we reached the Black Hills he was reduced to mere skin and bone, hardly a vestige of him left beyond the inexhaustible fund of grit and humor with which he was gifted. He reached Fort Dodge at the close of the campaign, but it had been too much for him. The news of his death was telegraphed by Captain Payne before we had fairly unsaddled for the winter.
Though brother officers in the same regiment, so are our companies scattered at times that before this campaign Bache and I had met but once, and that was in Arizona. To-day the most vivid picture I have in my mind of that trying march in which he figures is a duck-hunting scene that I venture to say has never been equalled in the experience of Eastern sportsmen. We had halted on the evening of September 7th, on the dripping banks of one of the forks of the Grand River (Palanata Wakpa, the Sioux call it, and a much better name it is), a muddy stream, not half the width of our Menominee, but encased between precipitous banks, and swirling in deep, dark pools. The grass was abundant, but not a stick of timber could we find with which to build a fire. While I was hunting for a few crumbs of hard-tack in my lean haversack, there came a sudden sputter of pistol shots on the banks of the stream, and I saw scores of men running, revolver in hand, to the scene. Joining them, I found Bache reclining in his travois and blazing away at some objects in the pool below him. The surface of the water was alive with blue-and-green-wing teal, and a regiment of ravenous men was opening fire upon them with calibre-45 bullets. Only fancy it! The wary, gamy bird we steal upon with such caution in our marshes at home, here on the distant prairies, far from the busy haunts of men, so utterly untutored by previous danger, or so utterly bewildered by the fusillade, that hardly one took refuge in flight, while dozens of them, paddling, ducking, diving about the stream, fell victims to the heavy revolver, and, sprinkled with gunpowder for salt, were devoured almost raw by the eager soldiery. "Great Cæsar's ghost," said Bache, as he crammed fresh cartridges into the chambers of his Colt, "what would they say to this on the Chesapeake?"
Another scene with Bache was at Slim Buttes. In order to prevent indiscriminate pillage among the captured lodges of the Sioux, General Crook had ordered the detail of guards to keep out the crowd of curiosity-seekers. Bache was lying very stiff and sore near one of the large tepees, and I had stopped to have a moment's chat with him, when something came crawling out of a hole slashed in the side by the occupants to facilitate their escape when Lieutenant Schwatka charged the village that morning; something so unmistakably Indian that in a second I had brought my revolver from its holster and to full cock. But the figure straightened up in the dim twilight, and with calm deliberation these words fell from its lips: "There ain't a thing worth having in the whole d—d outfit."
Bache burst into amused laughter. "Well, my aboriginal friend, who in thunder are you, anyhow? Your English is a credit to civilization."