Texas Jack, the famous scout in the employ of the army, and a companion, in the late autumn of 1876 crossed the lonely battleground and halted long enough to see that the graves had not been disturbed. They saw the path of the sentinel leading from grave to grave. They saw the skeletons of the red men slain by the shadow. They saw the shadow itself. They were leaving the valley when their ears were greeted by a wild laugh, and from a bed of rank grass and dry weeds a quarter of a mile away they saw the shadow beckon them to come forward. The shadow was a man—a tall, gaunt, heavy bearded and long-haired human being dressed in rags that once had been an army uniform. He held up in the air and shook at them a carbine and a sabre, and when they galloped away, he sent a leaden ball whistling over their heads.
This was the last time this trooper was seen alive, no doubt he was bereft of reason, and believed himself called upon to avenge his comrades and so lurked in the valley, living like the wild beasts around him and missing no chance to strike a blow.
Some years later, when peace was restored and Crow Dog with his son and two warriors were hunting buffalo on the Little Big Horn, they were themselves pursued by a hostile party of Crow Indians. They took refuge among the shelving rocks along the river. Far into the deep recesses, where the waves and winds for centuries had hollowed out a chamber, they found a skeleton. By its side lay a carbine, two revolvers and a long cavalry sabre; about the neck was a delicately wrought chain with a gold locket attached. This and some other trinkets they carried away. After a lapse of fourteen years from the time Custer and his soldiers fell, these same Sioux Indians were again on the war path in the Bad Lands of South Dakota. Custer’s old regiment was there, too. Many of them had fought with Reno and Benteen on that fateful 25th of June, and by the chance of war it was a part of their command under Colonel Forsythe who fought the battle of Wounded Knee. Among them was Charles Wilson, the beardless boy, who rode away with Reno, whilst his friend Jim Bristow followed Custer. No longer a boy, but a bronzed and bearded soldier who had stood the chance of fate in many an Indian fight.
After the battle, when they were gathering up the dead Indians frozen stiff by a four days’ blizzard which raged with wild fury over the plain, there was found about the neck of a young warrior a locket and chain. Wilson curiously examined the trophy and found upon opening it, the photograph of Jim Bristow on one side and upon the other the sweet face of the girl who had promised to be his wife. The young brave from whose neck the locket was taken was found to be the son of Crow Dog, who had married into Big Foot’s band, and this blood-stained bauble, which had at last found its way into the hands of Bristow’s friend as he had intended when they parted, and all the circumstances connected with it, revealed at last the identity of the shadow-scout who kept the midnight vigils over the graves of Custer’s heroic dead; who when the chill blasts of the northern winter had come, had crept into his lair among the rocks and far from the cottage where the voice of love had pleaded so long for his return, with the smoke of battle still before his eyes, and with the shouts and shots of that dreadful day still ringing in his ears, had died alone.
Wilson stood by my side a week later as a heavy army wagon rolled into Pine Ridge agency bearing the body of Sitting Bull, the great war chief, who had directed and led the fight on Custer’s men. When the wagon halted, Wilson drew the canvas cover from the dead chief’s form and gazed long at the bronzed, cruel face, which even in death, was magnificent in the strong drawn lines of unrelenting hatred. There was a cold glint of light in Wilson’s eye as he took one last satisfied look at this dead monster of the plains and turned away to keep his word given fourteen years before to his comrade—Jim Bristow—the last survivor of that awful massacre on the Little Big Horn.
[VI.]
INDIAN FIGHT IN COLORADO.
Old “Daddy” Stephenson sat in the shade of the ranch house, squinting his one eye toward the north, the other eye having been shot out a few years before. His squaw was boiling the leg of an antelope in a pot that swung under a tripod of sticks nearby, when “Doc” Kinnie and Charley Hayes rode up.