When on the third day into the outskirts of Fort Wallace rode with
their melancholy news the returning column, they found the little post
hard-put. Sacks of sand had been piled up for additional barricades;
mounds of earth betokened dug-outs. Twice the Indians had attacked it.
Yes, the Cheyennes under Chief Roman Nose had insultingly cantered
up, and when boldly had out-charged the two small companies of the
Seventh, led by Captain (Colonel) Alfred Barnitz, they were met by a
counter-charge from the Indians. Only after a hand-to-hand fight were
Roman Nose’s warriors at last driven off. Sergeant Anderson thought
that he had wounded Roman Nose. Half a dozen negro soldiers, on outpost
picket duty, had dashed forward, waiting no orders, in a wagon, to help
the cavalry; and the fort officers were loud in their praise of the act.
So poor little Fort Wallace, alone amidst the burning or freezing
plains, last post of the line to protect the road to Denver, was in
sore straits.
The telegraph was two hundred miles east, at Fort Harker; even the
stages had stopped running, save at long intervals, in pairs, when a
guard of soldiers could be furnished; dispatches and supplies had been
interrupted. Now the bad rations were rapidly growing worse, and scurvy
and cholera were aiding the Indians. The scurvy was caused by lack of
fresh meat and of vegetables; none of the doctors knew just why the
cholera appeared; it seemed to come from the heat and the ground.
The condition of plucky Fort Wallace worried the general much. Succor
must be brought in, of course. His own column had arrived pretty much
exhausted by long marches; but he decided to take one hundred of
the better mounted men and make a forced march to Fort Harker, for
supplies. Captain Barnitz had not been able to spare any men for that
purpose.
To Ned this was the most exciting march yet. It must be made mainly at
night, for coolness and to evade the Indians. All the stage route from
Wallace to Harker was said to be closely watched by the Cheyennes and
Sioux. The stations were abandoned; or else the men had collected in
their dug-outs, entered by underground passages from the station-house
or the stable.
To approach these dug-outs, especially at night, was no pleasant
matter. The first appeared as only a low mound of earth dimly outlined
against the dusky horizon. In fact, the scouts must get off their
horses and stoop against the ground, to see it. On slowly filed the
column—and as the next thing that happened, out from the mound spurted
a jet of fire—another—two more; and to “Crack! Bang-bang! Crack!”
bullets hummed viciously past the general, and Captain Hamilton (who
commanded the column), and Ned himself.
“What’s the matter there?” sung out loudly the general and the captain.
“We’re friends! White men! Cavalry!”
“Bang! Bang-bang! Crack!” And more bullets.
“Get your men out of here quick, captain. Those fellows are crazy,”
directed the general. “Send somebody forward to parley, and tell ’em
who we are.”
Lieutenant Tom Custer volunteered.
“You’d better crawl,” advised the general.
Colonel Tom advanced, in the dusk, toward the low mound beside the
station buildings. Presently he had disappeared; he was crawling.
“Bang!” greeted him a shot.
“Hello!” he hailed. “Don’t shoot. We’re cavalry, I tell you.”
“Come in close then; stand up an’ show yourself, if you’re white,”
retorted a voice.
“I’m coming,” answered Tom. “I’m Lieutenant Custer of the Seventh.”
The lieutenant arrived, and the column, listening, could hear him
earnestly explaining. Now from the dug-out a light flickered, and the
lieutenant shouted to the column to come on.
The dug-out held five station-men. They were waiting, on the outside,
and even in the starlight they were sombre-eyed and haggard.
“What’s the meaning of this, sirs?” demanded the general, angrily.
“Well, cap’n, you see it’s this way,” explained the leader, a huge
man with great full beard reaching to his waist. “We thought you was
Injuns, an’ we ain’t takin’ any chances, these days.”
“But you heard us hail you in good English.”
“Certain we did; but that didn’t prove much. No, sir-ee. There are
Injuns who speak as good English as you do, an’ that’s one o’ their
latest tricks. They’re up to every sort o’ scheme, cap’n; an’ while
we’re sorry to shoot at you, lettin’ strangers get near at night is too
risky a matter. Speakin’ English don’t count with us fellows. We’re on
to that Injun trick.”
Therefore every occupied stage station must be approached with great
caution. Besides the station dug-outs, the negro infantry posted in
squads along the route to protect it had their dug-outs, too. These
were of a more military nature than the station dug-outs, and were
styled “monitors,” after the Monitor which fought the Merrimac, during
the Civil War.
The negro squads first dug out a square hole about breast deep, and
large enough—say fifteen feet or more square—to hold them all. About
the rim they piled up the dirt and sod; and from side to side they laid
a roof of planks covered with more sod. Then they cut small loop-holes
in the low walls, and ran a tunnel out a short distance, with a trap
door. And they were well fixed. They could not be touched by fire or
arrow or bullet.
These queer fortifications, like huge squat mushrooms upon the flat
surface of the bare prairie, did indeed resemble a “cheese-box on a
raft.” At one of them, when the column arrived, the five negro soldiers
under a corporal were bubbling with glee.
“Yes, suh,” narrated the corporal, to the general and anybody else who
could hear, “we done had a fight. But ’twarn’t a fight; it was jes’ a
sort o’ massacree. After we got this heah monitor ’bout finished, a
whole lot o’ Injuns come ridin’ along. Reckon dey must have been five
hunderd or five thousand. Fust t’ing dey see, dey see dis ol’ hump a
stickin’ up. Don’t know what it-all means. No, suh. Got mighty curyus.
We-all lay low, an’ let ’em look an’ talk. Dey got so curyus dey
couldn’t hold off any longer, so dey rode in, cranin’ an’ stretchin’
laike chickens. When dey come right close, ‘Gin it to ’em!’ say I. ‘Gin
it to ’em!’ An’ we did gin it to ’em, out the loop-holes. We gin it
to ’em, an’ when dey skadoodled we gin it to ’em some more, an’ kep’
ginnin’ it to ’em till dey’s out o’ range. Hi-yah-yah! Dey shore was
scared.”
And—“Hi-yah-yah!” shouted in laughter his five privates.
“Good!” praised the general. “How many did they leave on the field,
corporal?”
“Well, dey didn’t leab no one on the field, gin’ral,” answered the
corporal. “But I reckon we mus’ have killed ’bout half, an’ other half
was nigh scyared to deff.”
The general was in a great hurry to reach Fort Hays, where (as all
supposed) was Mrs. Custer; and to reach Fort Harker, where could be
obtained the medicines and the food for suffering Fort Wallace.
At Fort Hays was found no Mrs. Custer, or Miss Diana, or black Eliza.
But all heard about a sudden flood from Big Creek which had drowned
several soldiers and had almost swept away the tent and the women
together; after that, the general’s household had been sent back to
Fort Harker, because Hays was not considered safe for them. Here at
Hays were waiting letters from Mrs. Custer, and the word that at Harker
the cholera was raging deadly.
Now the general was much alarmed; and leaving Captain Hamilton and the
company to rest a day at Hays, with Lieutenant Cook and Captain Tom
Custer and Ned and two soldiers he pushed on for Harker. The march
from Wallace to Hays, 150 miles, had been made in fifty-five hours;
the ride from Hays to Harker, sixty miles, was made in eleven and a
half hours—which was pretty good, considering the long ride that had
preceded.
Mrs. Custer was not at Harker. She and Miss Diana and Eliza had been
forwarded on to Riley, for Harker was no place in which to stay. So
from Harker the general also hastened to Riley—but Ned did not go.
Suddenly he felt ill; and the surgeon said that he had the cholera.