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Warrior Gap
A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68.
BY GENERAL CHARLES KING, U. S. A.
AUTHOR OF "Fort Frayne," "An Army Wife," "Trumpeter Fred," "Found in the
Philippines," "A Wounded Name," "Noble Blood and a West Point Parallel,"
"A Garrison Tangle," etc., etc.
THE HOBART COMPANY,
New York City.
Copyrighted 1898, by
F. Tennyson Neely.
Copyrighted, 1901, by
The Hobart Company.
WARRIOR GAP.
1.
Riding at ease in the lazy afternoon sunshine a single troop of cavalry
was threading its way in long column of twos through the bold and
beautiful foothills of the Big Horn. Behind them, glinting in the
slanting rays, Cloud Peak, snow clad still although it was late in May,
towered above the pine-crested summits of the range. To the right and
left of the winding trail bare shoulders of bluff, covered only by the
dense carpet of bunch grass, jutted out into the comparative level of
the eastward plain. A clear, cold, sparkling stream, on whose banks the
little command had halted for a noontide rest, went rollicking away
northeastward, and many a veteran trooper looked longingly, even
regretfully, after it, and then cast a gloomy glance over the barren and
desolate stretch ahead. Far as the eye could reach in that direction the
earth waves heaved and rolled in unrelieved monotony to the very sky
line, save where here and there along the slopes black herds or
scattered dots of buffalo were grazing unvexed by hunters red or white,
for this was thirty years ago, when, in countless thousands, the bison
covered the westward prairies, and there were officers who forbade their
senseless slaughter to make food only for the worthless, prowling
coyotes. No wonder the trooper hated to leave the foothills of the
mountains, with the cold, clear trout streams and the bracing air, to
take to long days' marching over dull waste and treeless prairie,
covered only by sage brush, rent and torn by dry ravines, shadeless,
springless, almost waterless, save where in unwholesome hollows dull
pools of stagnant water still held out against the sun, or, further
still southeast among the "breaks" of the many forks of the South
Cheyenne, on the sandy flats men dug for water for their suffering
horses, yet shrank from drinking it themselves lest their lips should
crack and bleed through the shriveling touch of the alkali.
Barely two years a commissioned officer, the young lieutenant at the
head of column rode buoyantly along, caring little for the landscape,
since with every traversed mile he found himself just that much nearer
home. Twenty-five summers, counting this one coming, had rolled over his
curly head, and each one had seemed brighter, happier than the last, all
but the one he spent as a hard-worked "plebe" at the military academy.
His graduation summer two years previous was a glory to him, as well as
to a pretty sister, young and enthusiastic enough to think a brother in
the regulars, just out of West Point, something to be made much of, and
Jessie Dean had lost no opportunity of spoiling her soldier or of
wearying her school friends through telling of his manifold perfections.
He was a manly, stalwart, handsome fellow as young graduates go, and old
ones wish they might go over again. He was a fond and not too teasing
kind of brother. He wasn't the brightest fellow in the class by thirty
odd, and had barely scraped through one or two of his examinations, but
Jessie proudly pointed to the fact that much more than half the class
had "scraped off" entirely, and therefore that those who succeeded in
getting through at all were paragons, especially Brother Marshall. But
girls at that school had brothers of their own, girls who had never seen
West Point or had the cadet fever, and were not impressed with young
officers as painted by so indulgent a sister. Most of the girls had
tired of Jessie's talks, and some had told her so, but there was one who
had been sympathetic from the start--a far Western, friendless sort of
girl she was when first she entered school, uncouthly dressed,
wretchedly homesick and anything but companionable, and yet Jessie
Dean's kind heart had warmed to this friendless waif and she became her
champion, her ally, and later, much to her genuine surprise, almost her
idol. It presently transpired that "the Pappoose," as the girls
nicknamed her because it was learned that she had been rocked in an
Indian cradle and had long worn moccasins instead of shoes (which
accounted for her feet being so much finer in their shape than those of
her fellows), was quick and intelligent beyond her years, that, though
apparently hopelessly behind in all their studies at the start, and
provoking ridicule and sneers during the many weeks of her loneliness
and home-longing, she suddenly began settling to her work with grim
determination, surprising her teachers and amazing her mates by the vim
and originality of her methods, and, before the end of the year,
climbing for the laurels with a mental strength and agility that put
other efforts to the blush. Then came weeks of bliss spent with a doting
father at Niagara, the seashore and the Point--a dear old dad as ill at
ease in Eastern circles as his daughter had been at first at school,
until he found himself welcomed with open arms to the officers'
mess-rooms at the Point, for John Folsom was as noted a frontiersman as
ever trod the plains, a man old officers of the cavalry and infantry
knew and honored as "a square trader" in the Indian country--a man whom
the Indians themselves loved and trusted far and wide, and when a man
has won the trust and faith of an Indian let him grapple it to his
breast as a treasure worth the having, great even as "the heart love of
a child." Sioux, Shoshone and Cheyenne, they would turn to "Old John" in
their councils, their dealings, their treaties, their perplexities, for
when he said a thing was right and square their doubts were gone, and
there at the Point the now well-to-do old trader met men who had known
him in by-gone days at Laramie and Omaha, and there his pretty
schoolgirl daughter met her bosom friend's big brother Marshall, a first
classman in all his glory, dancing with damsels in society, while she
was but a maiden shy in short dresses. Oh, how Jess had longed to be of
that party to the Point, but her home was in the far West, her father
long dead and buried, her mother an invalid, and the child was needed
there. Earnestly had old Folsom written, begging that she who had been
so kind to his little girl should be allowed to visit the seashore and
the Point with him and "Pappoose," as he laughingly referred to her,
adopting the school name given by the girls; but they were proud people,
were the Deans, and poor and sensitive. They thanked Mr. Folsom warmly.
"Jessie was greatly needed at her home this summer," was the answer; but
Folsom somehow felt it was because they dreaded to accept courtesies
they could not repay in kind.
"As if I could ever repay Jess for all the loving kindness to my little
girl in her loneliness," said he. No, there was no delicious visiting
with Pappoose that summer, but with what eager interest had she not
devoured the letters telling of the wonderful sights the little far
Westerner saw--the ocean, the great Niagara, the beautiful Point in the
heart of the Highlands, but, above all, that crowned monarch, that
plumed knight, that incomparable big brother, Cadet Captain Marshall
Dean. Yes, he had come to call the very evening of their arrival. He had
escorted them out, Papa and Pappoose, to hear the band playing on the
Plain. He had made her take his arm, "a schoolgirl in short dresses,"
and promenaded with her up and down the beautiful, shaded walks,
thronged with ladies, officers and cadets, while some old cronies took
father away to the mess for a julep, and Mr. Dean had introduced some
young girls, professors' daughters, and they had come and taken her
driving and to tea, and she had seen him every day, many times a day, at
guard mounting, drill, pontooning or parade, or on the hotel piazzas,
but only to look at or speak to for a minute, for of course she was
"only a child," and there were dozens of society girls, young ladies, to
whom he had to be attentive, especially a very stylish Miss Brockway,
from New York, with whom he walked and danced a great deal, and whom the
other girls tried to tease about him. Pappoose didn't write it in so
many words, but Jessie, reading those letters between the lines and
every which way, could easily divine that Pappoose didn't fancy Miss
Brockway at all. And then had come a wonderful day, a wonderful thing,
into the schoolgirl's life. No less than twelve pages did
sixteen-year-old Pappoose take to tell it, and when a girl finds time to
write a twelve-page letter from the Point she has more to tell than she
can possibly contain. Mr. Dean had actually invited her--_her_, Elinor
Merchant Folsom--Winona, as they called her when she was a toddler among
the tepees of the Sioux--Pappoose as the girls had named her at
school--"Nell," as Jessie called her--sweetest name of all despite the
ring of sadness that ever hangs about it--and Daddy had actually smiled
and approved her going to the midweek hop on a cadet captain's broad
chevroned arm, and she had worn her prettiest white gown, and the girls
had brought her roses, and Mr. Dean had called for her before all the
big girls, and she had gone off with him, radiant, and he had actually
made out her card for her, and taken three dances himself, and had
presented such pleasant fellows--first classmen and "yearlings." There
was Mr. Billings, the cadet adjutant, and Mr. Ray, who was a cadet
sergeant "out on furlough" and kept back, but such a beautiful dancer,
and there was the first captain, such a witty, brilliant fellow, who
only danced square dances, and several cadet corporals, all hop
managers, in their red sashes. Why, she was just the proudest girl in
the room! And when the drum beat and the hop broke up she couldn't
believe she'd been there an hour and three-quarters, and then Mr. Dean
escorted her back to the hotel, and Daddy had smiled and looked on and
told him he must come into the cavalry when he graduated next June, and
he'd show him the Sioux country and Pappoose would teach him the Indian
dances. It was all simply lovely. Of course she knew it was all due to
Jessie that her splendid big brother should give up a whole evening from
his lady friends. (Miss Brockway spoke so patronizingly to her in the
hall when the girls were all talking together after the cadets had
scurried away to answer tattoo roll-call.) Of course she understood that
if it hadn't been for Jessie none of the cadets would have taken the
slightest notice of her, a mere chit, with three years of school still
ahead of her. But all the same it was something to live over and over
again, and dream of over and over again, and the seashore seemed very
stupid after the Point. Next year--next June--when Marshall graduated
Jessie was to go and see that wonderful spot, and go she did with
Pappoose, too, and though it was all as beautiful as Pappoose had
described, and the scene and the music and the parades and all were
splendid, there was no deliriously lovely hop, for in those days there
could be no dancing in the midst of examinations. There was only the one
great ball given by the second to the graduating class, and Marshall had
so many, many other and older girls to dance with and say good-by to he
had only time for a few words with his sister and her shy, silent little
friend with the big brown eyes to whom he had been so kind the previous
summer, when there were three hops a week and not so many hoppers in
long dresses. Still, Marshall had one dance with each and introduced
nice boys from the lower classes, and it was all very well, only not
what Pappoose had painted, and Jessie couldn't help thinking and saying
it might all have been so much sweeter if it hadn't been for that odious
Miss Brockway, about whom Marshall hovered altogether too much, but,
like the little Indian the girls sometimes said she was, Pappoose looked
on and said nothing.
All the same, Mr. Dean had had a glorious graduation summer of it,
though Jessie saw too little of him, and Pappoose nothing at all after
the breakup of the class. In September the girls returned to school,
friends as close as ever, even though a little cloud overshadowed the
hitherto unbroken confidences, and Marshall joined the cavalry, as old
Folsom had suggested, and took to the saddle, the prairie, the bivouac,
and buffalo hunt as though native and to the manner born. They were
building the Union Pacific then, and he and his troop, with dozens of
others scattered along the line, were busy scouting the neighborhood,
guarding the surveyors, the engineers, and finally the track-layers, for
the jealous red men swarmed in myriads all along the way, lacking only
unanimity, organization, and leadership to enable them to defeat the
enterprise. And then when the whistling engines passed the forks of the
Platte and began to climb up the long slope of the Rockies to Cheyenne
and Sherman Pass, the trouble and disaffection spread to tribes far more
numerous and powerful further to the north and northwest; and there rose
above the hordes of warriors a chief whose name became the synonym for
deep rooted and determined hostility to the whites--Machpealota (Red
Cloud)--and old John Folsom, he whom the Indians loved and trusted, grew
anxious and troubled, and went from post to post with words of warning
on his tongue.
"Gentlemen," he said to the commissioners who came to treat with the
Sioux whose hunting grounds adjoined the line of the railway, "it's all
very well to have peace with these people here. It is wise to cultivate
the friendship of such chiefs as Spotted Tail and
Old-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses but there are irreconcilables beyond them,
far more numerous and powerful, who are planning, preaching war this
minute. Watch Red Cloud, Red Dog, Little Big Man. Double, treble your
garrisons at the posts along the Big Horn; get your women and children
out of them, or else abandon the forts entirely. I know those warriors
well. They outnumber you twenty to one. Reinforce your garrisons without
delay or get out of that country, one of the two. Draw everything south
of the Platte while yet there is time."
But wiseacres at Washington said the Indians were peaceable, and all
that was needed was a new post and another little garrison at Warrior
Gap, in the eastward foothills of the range. Eight hundred thousand
dollars would build it, "provided the labor of the troops was utilized,"
and leave a good margin for the contractors and "the Bureau." And it was
to escort the quartermaster and engineer officer and an aide-de-camp on
preliminary survey that "C" Troop of the cavalry, Captain Brooks
commanding, had been sent on the march from the North Platte at Frayne
to the headwaters of the Powder River in the Hills, and with it went its
new first lieutenant, Marshall Dean.
CHAPTER II.
Promotion was rapid in the cavalry in those days, so soon after the war.
Indians contributed largely to the general move, but there were other
causes, too. Dean had served little over a year as second lieutenant in
a troop doing duty along the lower Platte, when vacancies occurring gave
him speedy and unlooked-for lift. He had met Mr. Folsom only once. The
veteran trader had embarked much of his capital in business at Gate City
beyond the Rockies, but officers from Fort Emory, close to the new
frontier town, occasionally told him he had won a stanch friend in that
solid citizen.
"You ought to get transferred to Emory," they said. "Here's the band,
half a dozen pretty girls, hops twice a week, hunts and picnics all
through the spring and summer in the mountains, fishing _ad libitum_,
and lots of fun all the year around." But Dean's ears were oddly deaf. A
classmate let fall the observation that it was because of a New York
girl who had jilted him that Dean had forsworn society and stuck to a
troop in the field: but men who knew and served with the young fellow
found him an enthusiast in his profession, passionately fond of cavalry
life in the open, a bold rider, a keen shot and a born hunter. Up with
the dawn day after day, in saddle long hours, scouting the divides and
ridges, stalking antelope and black-tail deer, chasing buffalo, he lived
a life that hardened every muscle, bronzed the skin, cleared the eye and
brain, and gave to even monotonous existence a "verve" and zest the
dawdlers in those old-time garrisons never knew.
All the long summer of the year after his graduation, from mid-April
until November, he never once slept beneath a wooden roof, and more
often than not the sky was his only canopy. That summer, too, Jessie
spent at home, Pappoose with her most of the time, and one year more
would finish them at the reliable old Ohio school. By that time Folsom's
handsome new home would be in readiness to receive his daughter at Gate
City. By that time, too, Marshall might hope to have a leave and come in
to Illinois to welcome his sister and gladden his mother's eyes. But
until then, the boy had said to himself, he'd stick to the field, and
the troop that had the roughest work to do was the one that best suited
him, and so it had happened that by the second spring of his service in
the regiment no subaltern was held in higher esteem by senior officers
or regarded with more envy by the lazy ones among the juniors than the
young graduate, for those, too, were days in which graduates were few
and far between, except in higher grades. Twice had he ridden in the
dead of winter the devious trail through the Medicine Bow range to
Frayne. Once already had he been sent the long march to and from the Big
Horn, and when certain officers were ordered to the mountains early in
the spring to locate the site of the new post at Warrior Gap, Brooks's
troop, as has been said, went along as escort and Brooks caught mountain
fever in the Hills, or some such ailment, and made the home trip in the
ambulance, leaving the active command of "C" Troop to his subaltern.
With the selection of the site Dean had nothing to do. Silently he
looked on as the quartermaster, the engineer, and a staff officer from
Omaha paced off certain lines, took shots with their instruments at
neighboring heights, and sampled the sparkling waters of the Fork. Two
companies of infantry, sent down from further posts along the northern
slopes of the range, had stacked their arms and pitched their "dog
tents," and vigilant vedettes and sentries peered over every commanding
height and ridge to secure the invaders against surprise. Invaders they
certainly were from the Indian point of view, for this was Indian Story
Land, the most prized, the most beautiful, the most prolific in fish and
game in all the continent. Never had the red man clung with such
tenacity to any section of his hunting grounds as did the Northern Sioux
to this, the north and northeast watershed of the Big Horn Range. Old
Indian fighters among the men shook their heads when the quartermaster
selected a level bench as the site on which to begin the stockade that
was to enclose the officers' quarters and the barracks, storehouse and
magazine, and ominously they glanced at one another and then at the
pine-skirted ridge that rose, sharp and sudden, against the sky, not
four hundred yards away, dominating the site entirely.
"I shouldn't like the job of clearing away the gang of Indians that
might seize that ridge," said Dean, when later asked by the engineer
what he thought of it, and Dean had twice by that time been called upon
to help "hustle" Indians out of threatening positions, and knew whereof
he spoke.
"I shouldn't worry over things you're never likely to have to do," said
the quartermaster, with sarcastic emphasis, and he was a man who never
yet had had to face a foeman in the field, and Dean said nothing more,
but felt right well he had no friend in Major Burleigh.
They left the infantry there to guard the site and protect the gang of
woodchoppers set to work at once, then turned their faces homeward. They
had spent four days and nights at the Gap, and the more the youngster
saw of the rotund quartermaster the less he cared to cultivate him. A
portly, heavily built man was he, some forty years of age, a widower,
whose children were at their mother's old home in the far East, a
business man with a keen eye for opportunities and investments, a fellow
who was reputed to have stock in a dozen mines and kindred enterprises,
a knowing hand who drove fast horses and owned quite a stable, a sharp
hand who played a thriving game of poker, and had no compunctions as to
winning. Officers at Emory were fighting shy of him. He played too big a
game for their small pay and pockets, and the men with whom he took his
pleasure were big contractors or well-known "sports" and gamblers, who
in those days thronged the frontier towns and most men did them homage.
But on this trip Burleigh had no big gamblers along and missed his
evening game, and, once arrived at camp along the Fork, he had "roped
in" some of the infantry officers, but Brooks and the engineer declined
to play, and so had Dean from the very start.
"All true cavalrymen ought to be able to take a hand at poker," sneered
Burleigh, at the first night's camp, for here was a pigeon really worth
the plucking, thought he. Dean's life in the field had been so simple
and inexpensive that he had saved much of his slender pay; but, what
Burleigh did not know, he had sent much of it home to mother and Jess.
"I know several men who would have been the better for leaving it
alone," responded Dean very quietly. They rubbed each other the wrong
way from the very start, and this was bad for the boy, for in those
days, when army morals were less looked after than they are now, men of
Burleigh's stamp, with the means to entertain and the station to enable
them to do it, had often the ear of officers from headquarters, and more
things were told at such times to generals and colonels about their
young men than the victims ever suspected. Burleigh was a man of
position and influence, and knew it. Dean was a youngster without
either, and did not realize it. He had made an enemy of the
quartermaster on the trip and could not but know it. Yet, conscious that
he had said nothing that was wrong, he felt no disquiet.
And now, homeward bound, he was jogging contentedly along at the head of
the troop. Scouts and flankers signaled "all clear." Not a hostile
Indian had they seen since leaving the Gap. The ambulances with a little
squad of troopers had hung on a few moments at the noon camp, hitching
slowly and leisurely that their passengers might longer enjoy their post
prandial siesta in the last shade they would see until they reached
Cantonment Reno, a long day's ride away. Presently the lively mule teams
would come along the winding trail at spanking trot. Then the troop
would open out to right and left and let them take the lead, giving the
dust in exchange, and once more the rapid march would begin.
It was four P. M. when the shadows of the mules' ears and heads
came jerking into view beside him, and, guiding his horse to the right,
Dean loosed rein and prepared to trot by the open doorway of the stout,
black-covered wagon. The young engineer officer, sitting on the front
seat, nodded cordially to the cavalryman. He had known and liked him at
the Point. He had sympathized with him in the vague difference with the
quartermaster. He had had to listen to sneering things Burleigh was
telling the aide-de-camp about young linesmen in general and Dean in
particular, stocking the staff officer with opinions which he hoped and
intended should reach the department commander's ears. The engineer
disbelieved, but was in no position to disprove. His station was at
Omaha, far from the scene of cavalry exploits in fort or field.
Burleigh's office and depot were in this new, crowded, bustling frontier
town, filled with temptation to men so far removed from the influences
of home and civilization, and Burleigh doubtless saw and knew much to
warrant his generalities. But he knew no wrong of Dean, for that young
soldier, as has been said, had spent all but a few mid-winter months at
hard, vigorous work in the field, had been to Gate City and Fort Emory
only twice, and then under orders that called for prompt return to
Frayne. Any man with an eye for human nature could see at a glance, as
Dean saw, that both the aid and his big friend, the quartermaster, had
been exchanging comments at the boy's expense. He had shouted a cheery
salutation to the engineer in answer to his friendly nod, then turned in
saddle and looked squarely at the two on the back seat, and the
constraint in their manner, the almost sullen look in their faces, told
the story without words.
It nettled Dean--frank, outspoken, straightforward as he had always
been. He hated any species of backbiting, and he had heard of Burleigh
as an adept in the art, and a man to be feared. Signaling to his
sergeant to keep the column opened out, as the prairie was almost level
now on every side, he rode swiftly on, revolving in his mind how to meet
and checkmate Burleigh's insidious moves, for instinctively he felt he
was already at work. The general in command in those days was not a
field soldier by any means. His office was far away at the banks of the
Missouri, and all he knew of what was actually going on in his
department he derived from official written reports; much that was
neither official nor reliable he learned from officers of Burleigh's
stamp, and Dean had never yet set eyes on him. In the engineer he felt
he had a friend on whom he could rely, and he determined to seek his
counsel at the campfire that very night, meantime to hold his peace.
They were trotting through a shallow depression at the moment, the two
spring-wagons guarded and escorted by some thirty dusty, hardy-looking
troopers. In the second, the yellow ambulance, Brooks was stretched at
length, taking it easy, an attendant jogging alongside. Behind them came
a third, a big quartermaster's wagon, drawn by six mules and loaded with
tentage and rations. Out some three hundred yards to the right and left
rode little squads as flankers. Out beyond them, further still, often
cut off from view by low waves of prairie, were individual troopers
riding as lookouts, while far to the front, full six hundred yards,
three or four others, spreading over the front on each side of the
twisting trail, moved rapidly from crest to crest, always carefully
scanning the country ahead before riding up to the summit. And now, as
Dean's eyes turned from his charges to look along the sky line to the
east, he saw sudden sign of excitement and commotion at the front. A
sergeant, riding with two troopers midway between him and those foremost
scouts, was eagerly signaling to him with his broad-brimmed hat. Three
of the black dots along the gently rising slope far ahead had leaped
from their mounts and were slowly crawling forward, while one of them,
his horse turned adrift and contentedly nibbling at the buffalo grass,
was surely signaling that there was mischief ahead.
In an instant the lieutenant was galloping out to the front, cautioning
the driver to come on slowly. Presently he overhauled the sergeant and
bade him follow, and together the four men darted on up the gradual
incline until within ten yards of where the leaders' horses were
placidly grazing. There they threw themselves from saddle; one of the
men took the reins of the four horses while Dean and the other two,
unslinging carbine and crouching low, went hurriedly on up the slope
until they came within a few yards of the nearest scout.
"Indians!" he called to them as soon as they were within earshot. "But
they don't seem to be on lookout for us at all. They're fooling with
some buffalo over here."
Crawling to the crest, leaving his hat behind, Dean peered over into the
swale beyond and this was what he saw.
Half a mile away to the east the low, concave sweep of the prairie was
cut by the jagged banks and curves of a watercourse which drained the
melting snows in earlier spring. Along the further bank a dozen buffalo
were placidly grazing, unconscious of the fact that in the shallow, dry
ravine itself half a dozen young Indians--Sioux, apparently--were
lurking, awaiting the nearer coming of the herd, whose leaders, at
least, were gradually approaching the edge. Away down to the northeast,
toward the distant Powder River, the shallow stream bed trended, and,
following the pointing finger of the scout who crawled to his side, Dean
gazed and saw a confused mass of slowly moving objects, betrayed for
miles by the light cloud of dust that hovered over them, covering many
an acre of the prairie, stretching far away down the vale. Even before
he could unsling his field glass and gaze, his plains-craft told him
what was slowly, steadily approaching, as though to cross his front--an
Indian village, a big one, on the move to the mountains, bound perhaps
for the famous racecourse of the Sioux, a grand amphitheater in the
southern hills.
And even as they gazed, two tiny jets of flame and smoke shot from the
ravine edge there below them, and before the dull reports could reach
their ears the foremost bison dropped on his knees and then rolled over
on the sod; and then came the order, at sound of which, back among the
halted troopers, every carbine leaped from its socket.