A RACE FOR RATIONS.
The village of Slim Buttes destroyed, General Crook pushed ahead on his
southward march in search of the Black Hills and rations. All Sunday
morning Upham's battalion of the Fifth Cavalry covered the rear, and
fought back the savage attacks upon the column; but, once well away from
the smoking ruins, we were but little molested, and soon after noon
caught up with the rest of the regiment, and found the entire command
going into bivouac along a little stream flowing northward from an
opening among towering cliffs that were thrown like a barrier athwart
our line of march. It was cold, cheerless, rainy weather, but here we
found grass and water for our famished cattle; plenty of timber for our
fires, though we had not a thing to cook, but men and horses were weak
and chilled, and glad of a chance to rest.
Here Doctors Clements, Hartsuff, and Patzki, with their assistants, went
busily to work perfecting the improvised transportation for the wounded.
There was not an ambulance or a field-litter in the command. Two
officers--Bache, of the Fifth, and Von Luettwitz, of the Third
Cavalry--were utterly _hors du combat_, the latter having left his leg
at the fight on the previous day, and some twenty-five men, more or
less severely wounded, were unable either to walk or ride a horse.
Frontiersmen are quick to take lessons from the Indians, the most
practical of transportation masters. Saplings twelve feet in length were
cut (Indian lodge-poles were utilized); the slender ends of two of these
were lashed securely on either side of a spare pack-mule, the heavy ends
trailing along the ground, and fastened some three feet apart by
cross-bars. Canvas and blankets were stretched across the space between;
hereon one wounded man was laid, and what the Indians and plainsmen call
a _travois_ was complete. Over prairie or rockless road it does very
well, but for the severely wounded a far more comfortable litter was
devised. Two mules were lashed "fore and aft" between two longer
saplings; the intervening space was rudely but comfortably upholstered
with robes and blankets, and therein the invalid might ride for hours as
smoothly as in a palace car. Once, in the Arizona mountains, I was
carried an entire week in a similar contrivance, and never enjoyed
easier locomotion--so long as the mules behaved. But just here it may be
remarked that comfort which is in the faintest degree dependent upon the
uniform and steadfast serenity of the army mule is of most uncertain
tenure. Poor McKinstry, our wagon-master (who was killed in Payne's
fight with the Utes last September, and whose unflattering comparison
may have been provoked by unhappy experiences with the sex), used to
say: "Most mules could swap ends quicker'n a woman could change her
mind;" and it was by no means required that the mule should "swap ends"
to render the situation of the poor fellow in the _travois_ undesirable,
if, indeed, he was permitted to retain it.
[Illustration: A SICK SOLDIER ON A "TRAVOIS."]
Sunday afternoon was spent in doing the little that could be done
towards making the wounded comfortable, and the manufacture of rude
leggins, moccasins, etc., from the skins captured from the Indians on
the previous day. Sharp lookouts were kept, but no enemy appeared.
Evidently the Sioux were more than satisfied that Crook was worse than a
badger in a barrel--a bad one to tackle.
Early on the morning of the 11th we climbed stiffly into saddle, and
pushed on after our chief. Our way for some two miles or more led up
grade through wooded bluffs and heights. A dense fog hung low upon the
landscape, and we could only follow blindly in the trail of our leaders.
It was part of my duty to record each day's progress, and to sketch in
my note-book the topography of the line of march. A compass was always
in the cuff of my gauntlet, and note-book in the breast of my
hunting-shirt, but for three or four days only the trail itself, with
streams we crossed and the heights within a mile or two of the flank,
had been jotted down. Nothing further could be seen. It rained eleven
days and nights without perceptible stop, and the whole country was
flooded--so far as the mist would let us judge.
But this wretched Monday morning, an hour out from bivouac, we came
upon a view I never shall forget. Riding along in the Fifth Cavalry
column--every man wrapped in his own thoughts, and wishing himself
wrapped in something warmer, all too cold and wet and dispirited to
talk--we were aroused by exclamations of surprise and wonder among the
troopers ahead. A moment more and we arrived in amaze at a veritable
jumping-off place, a sheer precipice, and I reined out to the right to
dismount and jot down the situation. We had been winding along up, up,
for over an hour, following some old Indian trail that seemed to lead to
the moon, and all of a sudden had come apparently to the end of the
world. General Crook, his staff and escort, the dismounted men and the
infantry battalion away ahead had turned sharp to the left, and could be
faintly seen winding off into cloud-land some three hundred feet below.
Directly in our front, to the south, rolling, eddying masses of fog were
the only visible features. We were standing on the brink of a vertical
cliff, its base lost in clouds far beneath. Here and there a faint
breeze tore rents through the misty veil, and we caught glimpses of a
treeless, shrubless plain beneath. Soon there came sturdier puffs of
air; the sun somewhere aloft was shining brightly. We could neither see
nor feel it--had begun to lose faith in its existence--but the clouds
yielded to its force, and, swayed by the rising wind, drew away upward.
Divested of the glow of colored fires, the glare of calcium light, the
shimmering, spangled radiance of the stage, the symphony of sweet
orchestra, we were treated to a transformation scene the like of which
I have never witnessed, and never want to see again.
The first curtain of fog uplifting, revealed rolling away five hundred
feet beneath a brown barren, that ghastly compound of spongy ashes,
yielding sand, and soilless, soulless earth, on which even greasewood
cannot grow, and sage-brush sickens and dies--the "_mauvaises terres_"
of the French missionaries and fur-traders--the curt "bad lands" of the
Plains vernacular, the meanest country under the sun. A second curtain,
rising farther away to the slow music of muttered profanity from the
audience, revealed only worse and more of it. The third curtain exposed
the same rolling barren miles to the southward. The fourth reached away
to the very horizon, and vouchsafed not a glimpse of the longed-for
Hills, nor a sign of the needed succor. Hope died from hungry eyes, and
strong men turned away with stifled groans.
One or two of us there were who knew that, long before we got sight of
the Black Hills, we must pass the Sioux landmark of "Deer's Ears"--twin
conical heights that could be seen for miles in every direction, and
even they were beyond range of my field-glasses. My poor horse, ugly,
raw-boned, starved, but faithful "Blatherskite," was it in wretched
premonition of your fate, I wonder, that you added your equine groan to
the human chorus? You and your partner, "Donnybrook," were ugly enough
when I picked you out of the quartermaster's herd at Fort Hays the night
we made our sudden start for the Sioux campaign. You had little to
recommend you beyond the facility with which you could rattle your heels
like shillalahs about the ribs of your companions--a trait which led to
your Celtic titles--but you never thought so poorly of your rider as to
suppose that, after you had worn yourselves down to skin and bone in
carrying him those bleak two thousand miles, he would help eat you; but
he did--and it seemed like cannibalism.
Well! The story of that day's march isn't worth the telling. We went
afoot, dragging pounds of mud with every step, and towing our wretched
steeds by the bridle-rein; envying the gaunt infantry, who had naught
but their rifles to carry, and could march two miles to our one. But
late that afternoon, with Deer's Ears close at hand at last, we sank
down along the banks of Owl Creek, the Heecha Wakpa of the Sioux; built
huge fires, scorched our ragged garments, gnawed at tough horse meat,
and wondered whether we really ever had tasted such luxuries as ham and
eggs or porter-house steak. All night we lay there in the rain; and at
dawn Upham's battalion, with such horses as were thought capable of
carrying a rider, were sent off down stream to the southeast on the
trail of some wandering Indians who had crossed our front. The rest of
us rolled our blankets and trudged out southward. It was Tuesday, the
12th of September, 1876--a day long to be remembered in the annals of
the officers and men of the Big Horn and Yellowstone expedition; a day
that can never be thoroughly described, even could it bear description;
a day when scores of our horses dropped exhausted on the trail--when
starving men toiled piteously along through thick clinging mud, or flung
themselves, weeping and worn out, upon the broad, flooded prairie.
Happily, we got out of the Bad Lands before noon; but one and all were
weak with hunger, and as we dragged through boggy stream-bed, men would
sink hopelessly in the mire and never try to rise of themselves;
_travois_ mules would plunge frantically in bog and quicksand, and pitch
the wounded screaming from their litters. I hate to recall it. Duties
kept me with the rear-guard, picking up and driving in stragglers. It
was seven a.m. when we marched from Owl Creek. It was after midnight
when Kellogg's rearmost files reached the bivouac along the Crow. The
night was pitchy dark, the rain was pitiless; half our horses were gone,
many of the men were scattered over the cheerless prairie far behind.
But relief was at hand; the Belle Fourche was only a few miles away;
beyond it lay the Black Hills and the stores of Crook City and Deadwood.
Commissary and couriers had been sent ahead to hurry back provisions; by
noon of the coming sun there would be abundance.
The morning came slowly enough. All night it had rained in torrents; no
gleam of sunlight came to gladden our eyes or thaw the stiffened limbs
of our soldiers. Crow Creek was running like a mill-race. A third of the
command had managed to cross it the evening before, but the rest had
halted upon the northern bank. Roll-call showed that many men had still
failed to catch up, and an examination of the ford revealed the fact
that, with precipitous banks above and below, and deep water rushing
over quicksands and treacherous bottom at the one available point, it
must be patched up in some manner before a crossing could be effected.
An orderly summoned me to the general's headquarters, and there I found
him as deep in the mud as the rest of us. He simply wanted me to go down
and put that ford into shape. "You will find Lieutenant Young there,"
said he, "and fifty men will report to you for duty." Lieutenant Young
was there sure enough, and some fifty men did report, but there were no
tools and the men were jaded; not more than ten or twelve could do a
stroke of work. We hewed down willows and saplings with our hunting
knives, brought huge bundles of these to the ford, waded in to the
waist, and anchored them as best we could to the yielding bottom; worked
like beavers until noon, and at last reported it practicable despite its
looks. General Crook and his staff mounted and rode to the brink, but
appearances were against us, and he plunged in to find a crossing for
himself. Vigorous spurring carried him through, though twice we thought
him down. But his horse scrambled up the opposite bank, the staff
followed, dripping, and the next horseman of the escort went under,
horse and all, and came sputtering to the surface at our shaky causeway,
reached it in safety and floundered ashore. Then all stuck to our
ford--the long column of cavalry, the wounded on their _travois_ and the
stragglers--and by two p.m. all were safely over. The Belle Fourche was
only five miles away, but it took two good hours to reach it. The stream
was broad, rapid, turbid, but the bottom solid as rock. Men clung to
horses' tails or the stirrups of their mounted comrades, and were towed
through, and then saddles were whipped off in a dense grove of timber,
fires glowed in every direction, herd guards drove the weary horses to
rich pastures among the slopes and hillsides south of the creek bottom,
and all unoccupied men swarmed out upon the nearest ridge to watch for
the coming wagons. Such a shout as went up when the cry was heard,
"Rations coming." Such a mob as gathered when the foremost wagon drove
in among the famished men. Guards were quickly stationed, but before
that could be done the boxes were fairly snatched from their owner and
their contents scattered through the surging crowd. Discipline for a
moment was forgotten, men fought like tigers for crackers and plugs of
tobacco. Officers ran to the scene and soon restored order, but I know
that three ginger-snaps I picked up from the mud under the horses' feet
and shared with Colonel Mason and Captain Woodson--the first bite of
bread we had tasted in three days--were the sweetest morsels we had
tasted in years.
By five p.m. wagon after wagon had driven in. Deadwood and Crook City
had rallied to the occasion. All they heard was that Crook's army had
reached the Belle Fourche, starving. Our commissary, Captain Bubb, had
bought, at owners' prices, all the bacon, flour, and coffee to be had.
Local dealers had loaded up with every eatable item in their
establishments. Company commanders secured everything the men could
need. Then prominent citizens came driving out with welcoming hands and
appreciated luxuries, and just as the sun went down Colonel Mason and I
were emptying tin cups of steaming coffee and for two mortal hours
eating flap-jacks as fast as the cook could turn them out. Then came the
blessed pipe of peace, warm, dry blankets, and the soundest sleep that
ever tired soldier enjoyed. Our troubles were forgotten.