CHAPTER XIV[ToC]
A SCOUT FOR THE SIOUX
The dawn of an autumn day was breaking over a barren and desolate landscape. The mist was rising from the silent pools of the narrow stream that alternately lay in lazy reaches and sped leaping and laughing in swift rapid over pebbly bed—the Mini Chaduza of the Sioux. The sun was still far below the eastward horizon, but the clouds were gorgeous with his livery of red and gold, and the stars had shrunk from sight before the ardor of his beams. The level "bench" through which the stream meandered, the billowing slopes to the north and south, were bare of foliage and uninviting to the eye, yet keen and wary eyes were scanning their bald expanse, studying every crest and curve and ridge in search of moving objects. Only at the very brink of the flowing waters, and only in far-scattered places along the stream, little clumps of cottonwood-trees gave proof that nature had not left the valley utterly without shade and refuge when the summer's sun beamed hotly down upon the lower lands of the Dakotas. And now only among these scattered oases could even practised eyes catch any sign of life.
Here and there under the banks and shielded from outer view, near-by watchers might discover little, dull-red patches glowing dimly in the semi-darkness. Here and there among the timber and along the brink little groups of dark objects, shifting slowly about, betrayed the presence of animal life, and afar out upon the prairie slopes tiny black spots on every side, perhaps a dozen in all, told the plains-practised eye that here was a cavalry bivouac—a little detached force of Uncle Sam's blue-shirted troopers, thrown out from the shelter of fort or garrison, and lurking for some purpose in the heart of the Indian country.
For Indians there were by scores right here at the old antelope crossing only the night before. The sands of the ford were still trampled by myriad hoofs of ponies and streaked by the dragging poles of the travois. The torn earth on the northward rise out of the stream was still wet and muddy from the drip of shaggy breast and barrel of their nimble mounts. No need to call up Iron Shield or Baptiste or young Touch-the-Skies, Sioux scouts from the agency, to interpret the signs and point the way. The major commanding and all his officers and most of his men could read the indications as well as the half-breeds, natives to the soil. A big band of young warriors, with a few elders, had yielded to the eloquence of the messengers of Sitting Bull and were out for mischief. They had been missing from the agencies several weeks; had been ghost-dancing with their fellows from Pine Ridge to the west, and were by this time probably on their way to swell the ranks and stiffen the back of that big chief of the Minniconjou Sioux—"Big Foot," as known to the whites, Si Tanka, as known to the Indian Bureau, and "Spotted Elk," so said Iron Shield, the scout, as known to the Sioux themselves.
A famous character was Si Tanka. Next to Sitting Bull, now that Gall was out of the way, dying of illness and old age, Si Tanka had more influence than any chief afield, and he longed to be acknowledged head of the allied Sioux. He had been to Washington, had been photographed side by side with Mr. Blaine on the steps of the Capitol; had sold to the whites the right of way for a railway through his Cheyenne River lands. He belonged to the Cheyenne River Agency far to the east, and declined to live there. He had his own village up in the Cherry Creek country, midway between the troops at Fort Meade in the Black Hills and Fort Bennett on the Missouri. He had white man's log-cabins, wagons, furniture, horses, hens, and chickens. He had, moreover, hundreds of cartridges, and the means and appliances wherewith to reload his shells, and he had, what was worse, a lively son, Black Fox, who had more Winchesters than he knew what to do with, and an insatiable longing to use them against the whites.
Ever since the ghost-dancing had begun, Si Tanka stayed in the open. Agents went forth and begged him to come in where he belonged—to the Cheyenne Agency at the east, or to the Pine Ridge to the southwest, or the Rosebud to the southeast, or, if his lordship preferred, he might even go camp near Fort Meade, or surrender at Standing Rock Agency to the northeast, but to be out in the wilds and barely one hundred miles from Sitting Bull, also posing as a private and sovereign citizen, accepting government support but declining government supervision—that was something the Indian Bureau viewed with alarm, and well it might, for if Tatanka Iyotanka (Bull Sitting Big) and Siha Tanka, Si for short (Foot Big), should take it into their dusky heads to be allies and not rivals, if the great Uncapapa and the big Minniconjou were to join forces, there would be the mischief to pay all over the West. So the Bureau sent and civilly requested. Si Tanka most uncivilly replied, and Tatanka Iyotanka scorned to reply at all.