While the general waited specific orders from the War Department, Rain-in-the-Face must be confined in the guard-house. Here he stayed for almost four months. He remained ever calm, ever proud, looking at nobody when he was permitted to walk back and forth, chained to another prisoner, for exercise.
Early in the morning of April spread an alarm, from sentry to officers. Through a hole made in the wooden wall by white prisoners Rain-in-the-Face had stolen away. He did not appear at the agency. He was not found in the nearby camps. However, soon, by mouth to mouth, Sioux to Sioux, from Sitting Bull’s band of hostiles far up the Yellowstone River in Montana he sent word. Charley Reynolds himself was authority.
“Rain-in-the-Face says,” reported Charley, “to tell the Long Hair and the Long Hair’s brother that he will cut their hearts out because they put a great warrior in prison.”
[XXI]
SITTING BULL SAYS: “COME ON!”
This summer of 1875 no regular campaign or expedition was made by the Seventh Cavalry. The few months were spent in drills at Fort Lincoln and Fort Rice, and in short scouts to reconnoitre and for practice. However, there was no telling when the whole regiment might be ordered out in a hurry. The Sioux muttered constantly; and according to Charley Reynolds and other persons who knew, around the posts, they were “going bad.”
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were still outside the reservation, in their own country of the Powder River and the Big Horn region; but even Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, who had first signed the treaty of 1868, agreeing to the reservation of Dakota, complained stoutly of unfair treatment.
Red Cloud had claimed that the Sioux were being robbed in their supplies; some of the supplies sent out by the Government never reached them, and other supplies were unfit to use. An investigation proved that Red Cloud had spoken truth.