RETRIBUTION
Whoever it was who planned or placed Fort Minneconjou, one blunder at
least could be laid at his door--that it had enabled the enemy to
"locate" almost at the door of the fort. An odd condition of things was
this that resulted from the discovery of precious metals in the
magnificent tract misnamed the Black Hills--black presumably only in the
dead of winter, when their pine-crested peaks and ridges stood boldly
against the dazzling white of the Dakota snows. In '75 the Sioux had
bartered their secret to chance explorers, and Custer came down with his
scouting columns and confirmed the glittering rumor. In '76 the Sioux
squared accounts with Custer afar to the northwest in the affair of the
Little Big Horn, but while they were about it the miner and settler
swarmed in behind and staked out claims and cities from which they could
never be driven, for Crook's starved horses and starving men were
fortunately so numerous they kept the southward tribes of the savage
confederation too busy to bother with settlers. _They_ could be settled
later, after the warriors had dealt by Crook as they did by Custer. When
winter came, however, with Sitting Bull and the Uncapapas thrust beyond
the British line, and Crazy Horse, raving, done to death by the steel of
the guard he so magnificently defied, with Red Cloud disarmed and
deposed, with Dull Knife disabled, with Lame Deer doubled up by the
sturdy Fifth Infantry, and old Two Moons hiding his light in some
obscure refuge of the wilderness, and the old men, the women and
children herded on the reservation under the rifles of the army and the
young men scattered or slain, there was nothing left for the
hard-fighting, proud-spirited lords of the Hills--Ogalalla, Brule and
Minneconjou--but sullen acceptance of the great father's terms; and in
this wise came Silver Hill to the heart of the fair valley, nestling
under the screen of the Sagamore and its eastward spurs and the shield
of Uncle Sam, who sliced off for military purposes a block from the
Minneconjou reserve, and by way of compliment and consolation named the
cantonment therein established after the tribe thereof dispossessed. All
went swimmingly for the emigrant, the miner, the settler and the
subsequent supremacy of the white man until in course of time a big post
had to be built to replace the old log barracks, and from motives of
economy, in order to reduce to a minimum the expense of hauling supplies
and materials of the quartermaster's department, the new buildings were
planted at the extreme eastern edge of the reservation, and before the
first coat of paint was dry on the lintels the opposite bank of the
stream, a short pistol shot from the line, was planted thick with
shacks, shanties and saloons, and every known device of the devil to
prey upon the soldier.
In the five years that followed, that particular quarter section of what
soon became South Dakota was a storm center of villainy, especially when
the bi-monthly payday came round. By scores the soldiers were drugged
and robbed, by dozens they were beaten and bullied. By twos and threes
they were set upon, slugged and not infrequently someone was murdered.
No jury could be found in those days to convict a civilian of any crime
against the life or property of a servant of Uncle Sam. There came a
time when two of the best men of the garrison, veteran sergeants, having
been shot to death in cold blood by a brace of desperadoes in front of
Skidmore's saloon, the garrison turned out almost to a man. The
murderers fled to town on the horses of their victims; fifty troopers
followed, while over fifty tore Skidmore's to shreds. Silver Hill had a
riot that night, in which two deputy marshals bit the dust; so did two
or three troopers, but that didn't matter. The majesty of the law that
turned the original murderers loose had been violated by a brutal and
ungovernable soldiery, six of whom were later surrendered to be tried
for their crimes by a jury of their sworn enemies, while their
commanding officer was tried for his commission by a jury of his peers.
The soldiers were sent to civil prison and the colonel to military
Coventry--estopped from further promotion, and Silver Hill (pronounced
with an "e" in those days) for as much as a month exulted and rejoiced
with exceeding joy. Then a new general came to the command. Then Silver
Hill thrust its hands deep in its pockets and whistled in dismay, for
the general's first deed was to order Minneconjou's big garrison into
summer camp long marches away, to leave only men enough at the post to
take care of the property and thus to defraud the denizens of fringing
settlement, known to the Army as Thugtown, of some thousands _per
mensem_ of hard-earned cash--very hard. Moreover, when winter set in,
the garrison was distributed much to the betterment of Meade, Laramie,
Robinson, Niobrara, etc., and to the howling protest of the sturdy
settlers of Silver Hill, "thus robbed," said their eloquent
representative in Congress assembled, "of the protection assured them by
the national government." It was rich to hear the appalling description
given that December of the perils and privations of the people of the
southwestern section of the Dakotas. The Sioux were on the point of
rising and butchering the helpless and scattered settlers, said Senator
Bullion, and to do the county justice it must be owned that it did its
level best to stir up the Minneconjous, but those "troubled waters" had
been stirred too much in the past and refused now to boil over at the
beck of the politicians, so what could not be done in one way was worked
in another. The cat, in shape of the command, came back, and with the
onward march of civilization men and women of a higher class were drawn
to Silver Hill, and the "e" from the last part of its name.
And then in army circles there came to the front a man with a head on
his shoulders and a hand on the steering gear. In the interest of
civilization and civilian dealers Congress had cleaned out the old-time
sutler shop, which was no deplorable loss, and transferred the traffic
of his successor, the post trader, to his ubiquitous rival, the
publican. "The soldier's pay comes from the people and should return to
the people," said the advocates of the measure, and the soldier
non-voter, having about as many friends at the seat of government as a
crow in a corn field, matters at Minneconjou speedily became bad as
ever, for, reform having started at Silver Hill, the gamblers and
harpies being kicked from its corporate limits, these philosophers,--the
flotsam and jetsam of the frontier,--lost little cash and less time
before settling again, and in greater numbers, on the skirts of Uncle
Sam.
And then it was that, after a year or two of turmoil and trouble, "in
our day there lived a man" who solved the problem, dealt rum, the flesh
and the devil the worst blow known to the combination, and started under
the auspices of the post Exchange the common sense and only successful
system ever tried in the army, known to the Press and its civilian
readers by the name of the Canteen.
And then again after a few years of peace, prosperity and contentment,
good order and discipline, after the man whose monument is inscribed
"The Soldier's Friend," his good work finished, was gathered to his
fathers, the resultant years of thought and experiment were overthrown
in a day. A congress of women over-mastered a congress of men. Exit the
Canteen: Re-enter the grog shop, the hell and the hog ranch. Burned out
at the borders of Silver Hill, the way blazed for him and his vile
retinue of swindlers and strumpets by the best intentions that ever
paved the streets of sheol, back to the gates of Fort Minneconjou came
the saloon and its concomitants--and the day of order and discipline was
done.
"I wouldn't say a word against it," protested Colonel Stone to the
grave-faced Inspector sent out from St. Paul to investigate the first
killing, "if, when they shut up _our_ shop they had shut up _those_!"
and with clinching fist he struck savagely at empty space and the
swarming row of ramshackle tenements beyond the stream. "Of what earthly
good was it to anybody, I ask you,--except the distiller and dealer in
liquors,--to close our guarded, homelike tables and reopen that
unlimited unlicensed hell?"
A new road to Silver Hill, albeit roundabout, had become a necessity.
The old well-worn beeline through by way of the ford had become
impracticable for women and children and self-respecting people in
general. It was skirted for some two hundred yards by tenements and
tenants not easily described in these pages. The colonel had been jeered
at by painted sirens at upper windows. Priscilla Sanford, starting one
morning to town, turned crimson at the shrill acclaim of the scarlet
sisterhood, two of whom had kissed their hands to her. Stone, when he
heard of it, would have leveled the shack with the ground, but the
mournful plight of his predecessor, condemned for not preventing what
Stone would almost precipitate, gave him timely pause. Sandy might have
sallied forth and shot somebody not feminine, but Sandy was still in
arrest. The paymaster had come and gone. So had most of the money; so,
worse luck, after two days of salooning, had gone no less than fifty of
the garrison. In nearly two years Minneconjou had not had as many
desertions as resulted from those two days.
But, sorrowful to relate, among the first to go and the last to be heard
from were two of Priscilla's trusties--gone no man could say
whither--and in addition to this catastrophe something had strangely,
surely gone amiss with her paragon, Blenke--Blenke the scholarly, Blenke
the writer and linguist--and Priscilla's world was reeling under her
well-shod feet.
To begin with, how came Blenke, the impeccable, the would-be candidate
for transfer to the cavalry and aspirant for commission, to be
sojourning even for an hour at so disreputable a spot as Skidmore's?
Blenke, it will be remembered, had a forty-eight hour pass to enable him
to visit Rapid City on important personal business. Blenke was supposed
to have taken the westbound Flyer on Monday--the Flyer that flew five
hours late. Blenke was supposed to be spending all Tuesday, or most of
it, in the heart of the Hills. Blenke was not due at the post until the
afternoon of Wednesday, and was not expected to leave Rapid City until
Wednesday morning; yet here he was, of all places in the world, at that
hog ranch on Tuesday night. Stone sent a patrol over at 1 A. M. with a
spare horse and invitation for Private Blenke to return at once and
account for his eccentric orbit at office hours in the morning. The
patrol trotted over, nothing loath, but Blenke had disappeared. "Gone to
town for a doctor," said the abandoned few still groping about the
smoldering ruins. So the patrol returned without him. It was represented
that Blenke had scorched his face, singed off his eyebrows and burned
his hands in his gallant essay to save the women. But this was all
hearsay evidence.
When Blenke did appear on Wednesday afternoon his hands were bandaged,
his face was disfigured a bit, but his eyes were as deep and mournful,
his dignity and self-poise quite as unimpeachable, as before. He seemed
grieved, indeed, that his captain and colonel both so sharply questioned
him. He had intended going to Rapid City, but at the last moment in town
received information rendering his visit unnecessary, indeed
inadvisable. A man with whom he had had business associations in the
past, and who owed him much money, had been there, but had headed him
off by promising to meet him in Silver Hill. The train came, but not the
man, yet the conductor said such a man had boarded the train at the
Junction and must have dropped off as they slowed up for town after
passing Bonner's Bluff. Blenke had spent most of Monday night and all of
Tuesday in further search. Tuesday evening came a clue. The evasive
"party" had been seen at Skid's drinking heavily, and Blenke hastened
thither in partial disguise, he said, and was there when late Tuesday
night the shrieks from Skidmore's private quarters told of peril. The
drunken crowd in the bar at first took no heed. Shrieks were things of
frequent occurrence, but Blenke had rushed, found the shack all ablaze
within, and with difficulty and much personal risk had succeeded in
pulling out Mrs. Skidmore and her terrified child.
Blenke by manner, not by words, continued to convey to his inquisitors
that he took it much amiss that a soldier who had done such credit to
his uniform and the service should on his return be subjected to such
rigid cross-questioning, and be treated with such obvious suspicion. But
both colonel and captain had more to ask. Had he seen aught of the trio
from the fort who claimed to have spent Monday evening at Skidmore's?
Blenke declared he had not. He had spent that evening searching about
town; but he had heard of them, yes. There was no little talk among the
cowboys, tramps, toughs, and ranchmen in and about Skidmore's concerning
a party of soldiers that had been there hours Monday evening "raising
the devil." There had been a rough-and-tumble fight, too, but Blenke
virtuously disclaimed all personal knowledge of the men or their
misdemeanors. Asked to name some of the places he had visited Monday
evening and Tuesday in town, Blenke unhesitatingly mentioned as many as
a dozen. The adjutant jotted them down, and when the colonel sent an
officer in to investigate, it was found that Blenke's statement, like
his manner, was irreproachable. Moreever, it was found by the testimony
of certain hangers-on at Skidmore's that the story told by the
incarcerated trio was equally true. They had been seen about the
premises, drinking, card-playing, loafing, early in the evening, and
"off and on" all of the evening, until toward 10:30 o'clock they became
so ugly and quarrelsome and had so little money left that Skid refused
them further admission, even to wash the blood from their battered
faces. If the purpose of the examination was to connect these men, any
of them, with the assault upon Foster, it had certainly failed.
Even when Foster's verbatim statement came, duly type-written and
vouched for, and further examination was made, and Blenke and the three
worthies were further investigated, nothing was admitted and little
learned. Foster's statement was read by the adjutant and received in
grim silence by the colonel and one or two seniors called in for the
occasion. Smarting under the indignity with which he had been treated,
said Foster, and finding the Flyer would not be along before ten or
half-past ten, he decided to take a buggy, drive out to the post and
seek an interview with the colonel and certain other officers. It was
due to his honor that his statement be heard. He ordered his traps sent
to the train, so that if delayed he could drive thither at once, or even
have the ranchman caretaker at Fort Siding "flag the train." Barely two
miles out from town he overtook some soldiers apparently drunk; one of
them reeled almost under his horse's nose; he pulled up in dismay, and
instantly they attacked him on all sides at once. He was knocked
senseless, and when he came to himself they were all out on the
southward prairie. He could see the lights of the fort far away. He was
propped against a wheel and they were wrangling among themselves. He was
bleeding, dazed, had been cruelly beaten, but his wits were returning.
The moonlight was clear, and suddenly, in a row that broke out among
them, they fell upon each other, and a young, slight-looking man, who
seemed to be their leader, in striving to quell the row, lost the
handkerchief that hid his face. His light raincoat was torn open,
revealing the uniform of a lieutenant of cavalry. The form, features,
the dark little mustache, all that he could see, were certainly those of
Lieutenant Ray. Staggering to his feet, he unhappily drew their
attention again to himself, and then he was slugged and knocked
senseless and knew no more until he was being helped aboard the Pullman.
One of the men he vaguely remembered having seen before, but the only
one of the party he could have recognized was Lieutenant Ray. All
Minneconjou, he said, knew of the fracas between them that day; but few,
perhaps, had heard the lieutenant's threats, and in this brutal fashion
had he fulfilled them.
Copies of this, of course, had gone to Department Headquarters. The
commander was expected back at the end of the week from his tour of
inspection at Yellowstone Park. Sandy could not be held in close arrest
beyond the eighth day; but that the affair would have to be thoroughly
investigated by general court everybody felt and said. Indeed, Ray
himself would be content with nothing less. But what a solemn time was
this for Marion, his devoted mother; indeed for all at Minneconjou.
Up at the "ranking" end of the row Oswald Dwight lay in the grasp of a
burning fever that, coupled with what had gone before, had weakened his
reason and might well end his life. Under the same roof, visited at
intervals by the charitable, the sympathetic or the merely inquisitive
of their sex and station, Mrs. Dwight and her inseparable companion,
Felicie, made their moan and told their woeful tale to all comers. Inez
had been, she said, suffering all the torments of purgatory, and to many
eyes she looked it. Her husband, in his mad delirium, would not have her
near him: _he_ raved of the wife of his youth. She wept for his boy who
had been taken from her, his proper, his natural, his legal protector at
such a time. Inez was horrified to think of the outrage upon Captain
Foster, their attached and devoted friend. Inez would never believe, she
said, that such a gentleman as Mr. Ray could stoop to so vile a
vengeance, to the level of the assassin, but Felicie had other views.
The episode of that blood-stained gauntlet had been by no means
forgotten, and was dinned into the ears of those who would listen, with
infinite vim and pertinacity; this, too, despite the fact that Ray
denied having worn gauntlets that evening--having worn them, in fact,
that summer. They were no longer "uniform" for cavalry officers, and he
had not set eyes on that glove or its mate for over a month. Possibly
during the move from the major's quarters to the humble home of the
subaltern, but certainly somehow, Ray had lost several items that,
before the change in uniform, had been in frequent use, but of late
would hardly be missed, and of these were the gauntlets.
So there was distress--anxiety--sorrowing in more than one of the many
households at Minneconjou, and in the midst of it all Priscilla, who had
thought her burden, self-inflicted though it was, quite as much as she
could bear, was confronted with another. Blenke, who had been nervous,
excitable, almost ill on the very few occasions she had seen him since
his return; Blenke, who had promised to confide to her, his
benefactress, the cause of his worries, the story of his woes; Blenke,
whose mournful eyes had blazed with a fine fury when told by Hogan, who
couldn't abide him, of Miss Sanford's salutation from the window of the
reoccupied rookery at the ford; Blenke, who could never set foot on the
floor of the Canteen, turned up missing one night at check rollcall, two
hours after taps, was suddenly and most unexpectedly stumbled on by the
officer of the day making his rounds at 3 A. M.: not, as might have
happened to men of less indomitable virtue, coming from the direction of
Skidmore's, but almost at the very opposite end of the garrison, at the
rear gateway of the field officers' quarters, No. 2, so obviously
obfuscated, so utterly limp, that he could give no account of himself
whatever, was wheeled to the guard-house in a police cart and dumped on
the slanting bunk of the prison room with a baker's dozen of the
"Skidmore guard" sleeping off their unaccustomed drunk.