[Illustration: They Crossed the Gila at Flood Tide (page 188).]
_Thirty Years on
The Frontier_
....BY....
ROBERT McREYNOLDS,
AUTHOR OF
“_Rodney Wilkes_,” “_The Luxury of Poverty_,” “_A
Modern Jean Valjean_,” “_Facts and Fancies_.”
[Illustration]
EL PASO PUBLISHING CO.
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.
1906
_Copyright by_
ROBERT MCREYNOLDS.
1906.
TO
LOUIS TALIAFERRO,
_Colorado Springs,
Colorado_.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I. In Days of Innocence 1
II. Out for a Fortune 9
III. Black Hills Days 16
IV. The Custer Massacre 21
V. The Shadow Scout 31
VI. Indian Fight in Colorado 39
VII. A Cow Boy Duel 47
VIII. Pleasant Halfacre’s Revenge 53
IX. Capturing Wild Horses 63
X. An Expedition That Failed 72
XI. Across the Palm Desert 79
XII. The Last Stand of a Dying Race 87
XIII. The Tragedy of the Lost Mine 98
XIV. The Land of the Fair God 107
XV. Outlawry in Oklahoma 115
XVI. A New Land of Canaan 125
XVII. Told Around the Camp Fire 134
XVIII. The Lone Grave on the Mesa 141
XIX. Under the Black Flag 148
XX. In Cuban Jungles 156
XXI. Emulous of Washington 164
XXII. On the Round Up 169
XXIII. The Egypt of America 179
XXIV. In the Dome of the Sky 190
XXV. Where Nature is at her Best 197
XXVI. When the West was New 207
Thirty Years on the Frontier
I.
IN DAYS OF INNOCENCE.
In the following pages I shall tell of much personal experience as well
as important incidents which have come under my observation during
thirty years on the frontier. As a cowboy, miner and pioneer, I have
participated in many exciting events, none of which, however, caused me
the prolonged grief that a certain bombshell affair did when I was a
boy, resulting in a newspaper experience and habit of telling things,
and eventually led to my coming West.
My grandfather’s plantation in Kentucky and nearly opposite the town of
Newburgh, on the Indiana side, was as much my home as was my mother’s.
She being a widow and having my brother and sister to care for, as well
as myself, felt a relief from the responsibility of looking after me
when I was at my grandfather’s home.
The plantation faced the Ohio River, the wooded part of which had been a
camping ground for rebel soldiers, until they were driven out by the
shells of a Yankee gunboat. While hunting pecans in these woods one day,
I stumbled on to an unexploded bombshell, and, boylike, I wanted to see
the thing go off. However, I was afraid to touch it until I had
counseled with the Woods boys, whose father was a renter of a small
tract of ground below the plantation. That night the three of us met and
decided to explode the shell the following Sunday morning, after the
folks had gone to church. I feigned a headache when grandmother wanted
to take me in the carriage with them to church, but when I was satisfied
they were well down the road, I hurried to the strip of forest a mile
away, where the Woods boys were waiting. They had come in a rickety old
buggy drawn by a white mule. It was in autumn and as the leaves were dry
on the ground, we were afraid to kindle a fire, and decided to take the
shell near the tobacco barn, around which we could hide and watch it go
off. Neither of the boys would handle it, so I lifted it into the buggy;
then they were afraid to ride with it, and it was left to me to lead the
mule to the tobacco barn. I hitched the animal to a sapling near the
barn, while the other boys gathered up some kindling, and we made a pile
of old fence posts, and when I had laid the shell upon the log heap, we
lit the kindling with a match and all ran behind the barn, forgetting
all about the mule. The wood was dry and was soon all aflame. Every
little while one of us would peek around the corner to see if the thing
was not about ready to explode. We were getting impatient, when the mule
gave a great “hee haw” that called our attention to his peril. It was
his last “hee haw,” for in a second more the bomb exploded with a
deafening noise, and fragments of the shell screamed like a panther in
the air. We ran around to see the result of the explosion, and behold!
it had spread that mule all over the side of the barn.
The things my grandfather said and did to me when he returned from
church does not concern the public. But when he had finished, I was
fully convinced that I was all to blame, and that I owed Mr. Woods $150
for his demolished mule.
Then followed long lectures from my mother and grandmother, and to add
to my discomfiture was Mr. Woods’ lamentations and his expressed regrets
that it was not me, instead of his mule, that was blown up.
I was the owner of an old musket with which I spent most of my time
hunting rabbits, using small slugs of lead for shot, which I chopped up
with a hatchet. Two weeks before the bombshell episode, I had found a
musket-ball, and I concluded to try a man’s load in the gun on my next
rabbit; I poured in a full charge of powder, but when I came to ram the
ball home, it would go only half way down the barrel. I was afraid to
shoot then, lest the gun might burst, and as I could neither get the
ball out or farther down, I laid the barrel between two logs, tied a
string to the trigger, and got behind a stump and pulled it off.
A few minutes later while I was examining my gun, grandfather came
running out of the potato patch to find who was shooting at him.
However, he was so thankful that matters were not worse, that I got off
with a slight reprimand.
But this Sunday capped the climax. A council of my kinfolks was held
that night, and decided that neither man nor beast was safe on that
plantation if I remained. Their final verdict was that I should be sent
to my mother’s home in Newburgh, and there to learn the printer’s trade,
attend Frederick Dickerman’s night school, be made to pay for the mule,
and my musket confiscated. I was paid $3 a week as printer’s devil to
start with, one dollar of which I might spend for my clothes, fifty
cents for tuition in the night school, one dollar and twenty-five cents
for the mule debt, and the other twenty-five cents I might spend.
Grandfather was very careful to see that I saved the mule money, and I
used to think he took a special delight in collecting it from mother, to
whom I paid it every week.
It took me nearly three years in that printing office to get out of
debt. I was now eighteen years of age.
Life in the printing office was too monotonous; I wanted a more exciting
scene of action. I used to watch the great river steamers come and go,
and wondered if I could hold any kind of a position on one of them,
except carrying freight, when by accident one day there came an
opportunity. The steamer “Dick Johnson” was lying at the wharf loading
hogsheads of tobacco, when the freight clerk was injured by a fall of
the stage plank. The captain wanted someone to take his place, and my
schoolmaster recommended me. Here was a chance to put in practice the
bookkeeping I had studied under him. It was what I wanted--I could now
get a glimpse of the outside world.
The position on the “Dick Johnson” was a stepping-stone, for in another
year I was the mate of the steamer “Rapidan,” plying between Florence,
Alabama, and Evansville, Indiana, and had thirty negroes under my
control.
It was historic country through which we passed. The trees on the
islands near Pittsburgh Landing yet showed signs of shot and shell fired
by federal gunboats. Ofttimes some passenger who had been a participant
on one side or the other at Shiloh, would entertain his listeners for
hours with stories of the fight, until some of us younger officers
became imbued with the war spirit.
The autumn of 1875 had come when yellow fever broke out aboard our boat,
and we lay in quarantine two miles below Savannah, Tennessee, for a
month. I stayed with the boat until we were released, and then went to
my home in Newburgh, ill with malarial fever.
Stories of rich gold finds in the Northwest had been circulated through
the newspapers, and one day I resolved to try my luck. The things we
believe we are doing for the last time, always cause a pang of sorrow,
and as I packed my valise on Sunday afternoon to leave forever the home
of childhood, my feelings can be better imagined than described. My
grandparents came over from their Kentucky home to bid me good-bye. When
I was ready to start, grandfather took from his pocket a roll of bills,
and placing them in my hands, said: “Here, Mackey, is your mule money,
and I have added interest enough to make the sum total $500. I paid Mr.
Woods for his mule, but I wanted to teach you a lesson. Profit by it,
and make good use of the money, and say, Mackey, whatever you do in
life, never insult a blind man, never strike a cripple and never marry a
fool.”
It was the last time I ever saw the noble old guardian of my youth. The
first two of his parting injunctions I have religiously obeyed.
II.
OUT FOR A FORTUNE.
My first view of the Nebraska plains was the next morning after leaving
Omaha, and I thought I never saw anything half so grand. The February
sun threw its beams aslant the mighty sea of plain over which so many
white covered wagons had toiled on their way to the then wild regions of
the West.
Small herds of buffalo and antelope were frequently seen from the car
windows; the passengers fired at them and often wounded an antelope,
which limped away in a vain attempt to join its mates. That night we
witnessed the mighty spectacle of the plains on fire. The huge, billowy
waves of flame leaped high against a darkened sky, and swept with hiss
and roar along the banks of the shallow Platte. The emigrant train upon
which I was aboard was crowded with people of all sorts. Many of them
were homeseekers on their way to Oregon and California, while not a few
adventurers like myself were bound for the Black Hills. A young man who
went under the name of Soapy Wyatte, was working the train on a
three-card monte game, and was very successful until he cheated a couple
of ranchmen out of quite a sum of money. Then they organized the other
losers, and were in the act of hanging him with the bell rope when he
disgorged his ill-gotten gains and paid back the money. Men of his class
were plentiful, but as a rule they were careful not to cheat the
frontiersman, for when they did they usually got the worst of it.
Cheyenne at that time was a typical frontier town. Gambling houses,
saloons and dance halls were open continuously, night and day. Unlucky
indeed was the tenderfoot who fell into their snare. I soon secured
transportation with a mule-train for Deadwood. There were thirty-three
of us in the party. The wagons were heavily loaded with freight and the
trail was in frightful condition; we ofttimes were compelled to walk.
I had bought a heavy pair of boots for the trip, but the sticky alkali
mud made them so heavy that I soon cut off the tops. The next thing, I
put my Winchester rifle and revolver in the wagon and then trudged along
the best I could. The Sioux Indians were on the warpath and it was
dangerous to get far away from the wagon train. Almost every freighter
we met warned us against Red Canyon. The stage drivers reported “hold
ups” and murders by organized bands of road agents. This kept us on the
alert. At night there was a detail of eight, to divide up the night in
standing guard. These men were selected from the most experienced
plainsmen, of whom there were quite a number with us.
We were eight days out from Cheyenne, and several inches of snow had
fallen during the night, but the sun rose clear on the biting cold of
the morning. Suddenly we heard shots ahead. “Indians! Indians!” shouted
one driver to another and then the wagons were quickly formed in a
circle, the mules being unhitched and brought to the center of the
circle.
Then for the first time I saw the hideous forms of a band of half-naked
savages mounted on their ponies in the distance. They were galloping in
a circle around us, yelling their war cry, “Hi-yi, Hip-yi, yi.” They
fell from their horses before the deadly aim of our men; their bullets
came like the angry hum of hornets about our heads. Their numbers
increased from over the foothills, whence they first came. There was a
look of desperation upon the faces of our men, such as pen can not
describe. James Morgan, who was standing near me in the act of reloading
his Winchester, suddenly fell nerveless to the ground. Our captain’s
voice rang out now and then, “Be careful there, boys; take good aim
before you fire.” Two Indians circled nearer than the others. They were
lying on their horses’ necks and firing at us while they were at full
gallop. I took aim at one and fired; others must have done so at the
same time, for both of them fell from their horses. The fight lasted
perhaps an hour, when the Indians withdrew to the hills. One of our men
lay dead and two were wounded. I went to where the two Indians had
fallen. There lay their forms, cold and stiff in death. The sunbeams
were slanting over those snow covered hills. I felt an unaccountable
terror as I looked upon them and the crimson snow which their life blood
had stained. The raw north wind seemed to pierce my very heart. Night
was coming on, and with it all the horrors of uncertainty. I lingered
about the spot for some time, with a dreadful fascination mingled with
terror. Human life had perished there; human souls had gone into the
uncertainty of an unknown beyond. With my brain reeling with excitement
of the day and sickened in heart, I returned to our wagons, where some
of us walked outside the circle throughout the long watches of that
wintry night.
When the morning sun rose clear above the snow-covered hills, we wrapped
the body of the dead teamster in his blankets, and again took up the
toilsome drive. The Indians had retired from the fight, probably for the
reason that they saw another outfit of wagons coming far down on the
plain. The wagons overtook us about 9 o’clock, and after that we had no
more trouble with Indians.
Deadwood, at that time, was like all the frontier mining towns. Saloons,
gambling houses and dance halls comprised the business of the place.
The gulch was dotted with miners’ cabins and dug-outs. There were a few
stores, restaurants, and a bank, but as yet the town had not started a
“regular” graveyard. The news of our fight soon spread up and down the
gulch and many were the willing hands that offered their services in the
burial of James Morgan, our teamster. They dug his grave on the
hillside, where afterwards more than five thousand men were buried. They
either fell from the deadly pneumonia, or from the bullets of each other
in quarrels. When Morgan’s grave was ready to be filled, some one
suggested that a chapter from the Bible should be read, but none of us
knew where to ask for one, in all Deadwood. Presently a boy said, “I
will find one,” and he soon returned with a young lady, who proved to be
his sister. He handed the book to our bronzed captain of the mule train;
he shook his head. Then someone asked her to read it. When she began,
those grim frontiersmen bared their heads, and I fancied I saw the tears
gather on more than one bronzed cheek as she knelt upon the frozen clay
and offered up a prayer for the dead teamster’s soul.
The adventurous spirits from far and wide were flocking to this new
Eldorado. Wild Bill, the famous scout, Captain Jack Crawford, Texas
Jack, and other equally noted scouts and Indian fighters, were there.
They sought gold and adventure alike, only for the pleasure it would
bring.
III.
BLACK HILLS DAYS.
I knew Doc Kinnie was not a civil engineer, but he had a plan which
looked good, and as I was almost broke, I consented to help him work it.
There was a horseshoe bend in the creek which might be drained for
placer mining by tunneling through in a narrow place. I talked up the
project with some of the boys, and they agreed to dig the tunnel while
Doc did the civil engineering. Day after day they dug and blasted rock,
while Doc stood around looking wise and encouraging the work. In about a
month they were practically through to the other side of the creek. Then
they began to call for Doc’s measurements and calculations. “Never mind,
you are not through yet,” he would say, “I will let you know when to
stop digging.”
“But we can hear the water rushing,” they would say.
[Illustration: General George A. Custer (page 21).]
“You fellows can’t tell anything about it. Sounds of rushing water are
always carried a long distance by rocks.”
“But we are not in the rocks now, we are in a clay bank.”
“Clay does the same thing; keep on digging.”
Two days later and there was a commotion at the lower end of the tunnel,
when a full head of water came rushing out, bearing with it men,
wheelbarrows and shovels. They were nearly drowned, and half frozen,
when they scrambled out of the creek. Mad as hornets, they sought their
civil engineer, but he was nowhere to be found. The work was done.
The prospects were good. When their clothes were dried and they had
eaten dinner, they laughed over the incident and pardoned Doc’s
miscalculation. With pan and rocker, we now began to work the dry
horseshoe bend. Nuggets weighing an ounce, and from that on down to the
size of a pin head, were found. The fellows were honest, and made an
even divide all around at the cleanup each night. In two months we had
taken out over $6,000, and then sold the claim to a placer mining
company for $18,000 in cash--$3,000 apiece for the six of us. In two
months we were all broke; the money had gone into wildcat speculation in
mines. But who cared? Were the hills not full of gold, and all to be had
for the digging?
I joined a party who went thirty miles to the northwest in search of new
diggings, and the most that came of it was a laughable incident.
The great hills rose on every side, frowning darkly in the dense forest
of pine. Our voices echoed from rock to rock, as we sat one noon-day
about our campfire, talking of possible finds, when, bareheaded, with
hair disheveled, blood flowing from a wound in his face, and a wildcat
held to his chest in close embrace, Mark Witherspoon rushed into camp,
yelling at the top of his voice. He was prospecting in a ravine a mile
distant, when he saw something waving in the underbrush. Thinking it was
mountain grouse, he advanced in hope of getting a shot, when a huge
wildcat sprang at his throat.
As the forepaws of the animal struck his chest, he let fall his gun, and
hugged the beast with all his strength to his chest with both arms. The
head of the wildcat was drawn slightly backward by the tense pressure
of his arms upon its back, while the claws were rendered practically
powerless by the close embrace. So quick had been Witherspoon’s action
at the start, that he received only a slight wound on the face. In this
predicament, he started on a run for the camp. He did not dare to let go
and the wildcat wouldn’t, so both held fast. The cat glared up fiercely
at him with its yellow eyes, while its hot breath came into his face at
every leap. Whenever the vicious beast made the slightest struggle,
Witherspoon hugged the tighter, fearing at every step he might stumble
and the deadly teeth be fixed in his throat.
In this manner he reached camp, and it was some seconds before he could
make us understand that the cat was terribly alive, and that he was not
holding it because he wanted to, or racing for the sake of the exercise.
Finally one of the men despatched the animal with his revolver, and, to
Witherspoon’s inexpressible relief, the dead beast dropped from his
arms. Before the boys got through telling the story afterwards, they
made it out that Witherspoon had run nine miles with the wildcat.
Soon after our return to Deadwood, a man in an almost fainting condition
came into town and announced that his companion had either been killed
or captured by the Indians. A party was organized and was led by Wild
Bill. It was not long before we came upon a scene that told what the
poor fellow’s fate had been, much plainer than words are able to
portray. We found his blackened trunk fastened to a tree with rawhide
thongs, while all around were evidences of the great torture which had
been inflicted ere the fagots had been lighted.
When brought face to face with this, I stowed two cartridges safely away
in my vest pocket, resolved to suicide rather than to fall into the
hands of such miscreants. Then came the news of the Custer massacre. For
many days afterward we patrolled the mountain tops, and kept bivouac
fires lighted by night, as signals.
IV.
THE CUSTER MASSACRE.
The arrival at Fort Lincoln, on the Missouri River, of a party of
Indians in 1874, who offered gold dust for sale, was the beginning of
the cause that led to the great Sioux war in 1876, in which General
Custer and his devoted soldiers were massacred on the Little Big Horn
River on the 25th day of June of that year.
The gold which the Indians brought to Fort Lincoln, they said came from
the Black Hills, where the gulches abounded with the yellow dust. The
consequent rush of white men into that region was, in fact, a violation
of the treaty of 1867, when Congress sent out four civilians and three
army officers as peace commissioners, who gave to the old Dakota tribes,
as the Sioux were then called, the vast area of land bounded on the
south by Nebraska, on the east by the Missouri River, on the west by
the 104th Meridian, and on the north by the 46th Parallel. They had the
absolute pledge of the United States that they should be protected in
the peaceable possession of the country set aside for them. This
territory was as large as the state of Michigan, and of its interior
little or nothing was known except to a few hardy traders and trappers
prior to 1874.
With the advent of the gold seekers in 1875 the Indians saw that the
greedy encroachments of the white man were but faintly resisted by the
United States government, and that sooner or later it meant the total
occupation of their country, and their own annihilation, and so with the
traditional wrongs of their forefathers ever in mind, they determined to
make a stand for their rights.
The scene of General Terry’s campaign against these Indians lay between
the Big Horn and Powder Rivers, and extended from the Big Horn Mountains
northerly to beyond the Yellowstone River. A region barren and desolate,
volcanic, broken and ofttimes almost impassable, jagged and precipitous
cliffs, narrow and deep arroyas filled with massive boulders, alkali
water for miles, vegetation of cactus and sagebrush--all these represent
feebly the country where Custer was to contend against the most
powerful, warlike and best armed body of savages on the American
continent.
An army in this trackless waste was at that time at the mercy of guides
and scouts. The sun rose in the east and shone all day upon a vast
expanse of sagebrush and grass and as it set in the west cast its dull
rays into a thousand ravines that neither man nor beast could cross;
to go north or south could only be decided by personal effort. An
insignificant turn to the wrong side of a little knoll or buffalo wallow
would ofttimes lead the scout into ravine after ravine, or over bluff
after bluff, until at last he would stand on the edge of a yawning
canon, hundreds of feet in depth and with perpendicular walls. Nothing
was left for him to do but to retrace his steps and find an accessible
route.
Custer had been ordered by General Terry to proceed with his command,
numbering 28 officers and 747 soldiers, up the Rosebud River, and if the
trail of the Indians was not found at a given point, to then follow the
course of the Little Big Horn. These instructions were followed, and on
the 24th of June he turned westerly toward the Little Big Horn, where a
large Indian village was discovered some fifteen miles distant. The
trail they were on led down the stream at a point south of the villages.
Major Reno with three companies was ordered to follow the trail, cross
the stream and charge down its north bank, while Captain F. W. Benteen
was sent with three companies to make a detour south of Reno.
The point where the little armies separated, many of their men never to
meet again, the river wound its silvery course for miles in the narrow
valley as far as the eye could reach; its banks were fringed with the
elm and cottonwood, whose foliage hid from view a thousand Indian tepees
beyond the river. Sharp eyes had noted the advancing columns, and quick
brains had already begun to plan their destruction.
That night the three divisions made a silent bivouac beneath the stars
which must have looked down like pitying eyes.
In the grey light of the morning, and with noiseless call to boots and
saddles, they were stealing on toward the foe.
Reno proceeded to the river and crossed it, charged down its west banks
and met with little resistance at first. Soon, however, he was attacked
by such numbers that he was obliged to dismount his men, shelter his
horses in a strip of woods and fight on foot. Finally, finding he would
soon be surrounded, he again mounted his men, charged the enemy and
recrossing the river, took a naturally fortified position on the top of
a bluff.
Benteen, returning from his detour, discovered his position and drove
away the Indians and joined him. Soon the mule train was also within his
lines, making seven companies under his command.
Reno engaged the Indians soon after noon on the 25th and did some hard
fighting until the evening of the 26th, when the enemy withdrew. After
congratulations with their reinforcements the question uppermost in
every mind was: “Where is Custer?”
They had heard heavy firing on the afternoon of the 25th and saw the
black cloud of smoke settle like a pall over the valley, but Reno had
his wounded to care for, and to have gone to the relief of Custer would
have left them to be butchered. Neither could he divide his command, for
such a course would have been suicidal.
Meanwhile the supply steamer, Far West, with General Terry on board,
steamed up the Yellowstone on June 23rd and overtook Gibbon’s troops
near the mouth of the Big Horn on the morning of the 24th. At 5 o’clock
on the morning of the 25th, Gibbon’s column was marching over a country
so rugged as to tax the endurance of the men to the utmost, and the
infantry halted for the night, meantime General Terry pushed ahead with
the cavalry and a light mountain battery. On the morning of the 26th,
some Crow Indians reported to General Terry that a great fight had been
going on the day before, and later scouts reported that a dense, heavy
smoke was resting over the southern horizon far ahead, and in a short
time it became visible to all.
So broken was the country and progress became so difficult that it was
not until the morning of the 27th that Terry’s relief column found the
trail of Custer.
They had passed cautiously through a dense grove of trees and the head
of the column entered upon a beautiful level meadow about a mile in
width extending along the west side of the stream and skirted east and
west by high bluffs. It was apparent at sight that this meadow had been
the site of an immense Indian village and showed signs of hasty
abandonment. Hundreds of lodge poles with finely dressed buffalo robes,
dried meats, utensils and Indian trinkets were left behind. In a large
tepee still standing were the stiffened forms of ten dead Indians. Every
step of the march from here on showed signs of a desperate struggle. The
dead bodies of Indian horses were seen; here and there were cavalry
equipments, and soon the bodies of dead troopers, beside their frantic
and still struggling, wounded horses gave evidence of a disastrous
battle, and farther on was revealed a scene calculated to appall the
stoutest heart. Here was a skirmish line marked by rows of slain with
heaps of empty cartridge shells before them, and their officers lay dead
just behind them. Still farther on men lay in winrows, their faces still
drawn with the awful desperation of a struggle unto death; pulseless
hands still clasped blood-stained sabres. Near the highest point of the
hill lay the body of General Custer. There was a cordon of his brave
defenders dead about him; his long hair was clotted with blood, while a
great wound in his breast told how the brave soul had gone somewhere out
into the wide waste and hush of eternity. Near him lay the body of his
brother, Captain Custer, and some distance away another brother, Boston
Custer, and his nephew, Armstrong Reed, a youth of 19. All were scalped
except General Custer and Mark Kellogg, a correspondent of the New York
Herald.
When the fight was at the hardest a Crow Indian with Custer wrapped
himself in a dead Sioux Indian’s blanket and made his escape; as he left
the field he saw the squaws and Indian children rifling the dead of
their trinkets and going about with their stone battle axes beating out
the brains of the wounded; they danced about over the dead and dying,
mutilating their bodies and singing the wild, weird strains of their
battle songs.
When the welcome news of relief came to Reno’s besieged command, strong
men wept like children.
Among the first of his men to search among the fallen for a dead friend
was one Charles Wilson, a blue-eyed, beardless trooper, a mere boy whose
heart seemed to fairly break as he contemplated what must have been the
awful death of his comrades. The man he was seeking was Jim Bristow, a
tall, dark private whose last words to the young trooper were:
“Charley, my hour has come. We shall ride into this fight and you will
come back alone. I want you to promise to take a little trouble for me
when I am gone. You will find her face here in this locket upon my
breast. I had thought to some day make her my wife, and that thought has
gladdened my lonely life. Write to her, Charley, and tell her where is
my resting place and that my spirit will wait for hers in that
borderland twixt heaven and earth.”
The boy answered, and his voice was low with pain. Just then the bugle
sounded, and for an instant eye met eye and hand touched hand, and Jim
Bristow rode away with Custer’s column. This was the man young Wilson
was searching for. The dead were so frightfully mutilated, their bodies
bloated, blackened and swollen by the hot rays of the sun that they were
buried as speedily as possible, on June 28th. Major Reno and the
survivors of his regiment performed the last sad rites over their
comrades and then a general retreat to the mouth of the Big Horn River
was ordered.
V.
THE SHADOW SCOUT.
The bugle notes had died away, the cloud of battle smoke lifted from the
valley and peaceful starlight shone over the rugged hills when a shadow
crept out of a deep ravine and skulked into the valley of death and
began dealing out retribution. Chief Dull Knife had much to say about it
when he surrendered. He spoke in whispers when he referred to it, and he
looked suddenly around, as if he feared it was softly stealing upon him
to stab him in the back. Chief Gall’s braves had something to say about
it when they surrendered, and when white men asked them who or what the
shadow was, they shook their heads and whispered:
“We kill ’em all, but yet there is one left. It is a white man; there is
blood on his face and clothing; he carries a sabre and two revolvers,
and the night wind blows his long black hair over his shoulders. It is a
spirit sent by the Great Manitou to watch over the graves of the white
soldiers.”
White men saw the shadow, hunters, trappers and scouts who built their
camp fires near that valley, through which the big mountain wolf skulked
and prowled all night long, had felt the mysterious presence of the
shadow or had seen it. They fled from their blankets at its soft step,
and they had fired at it, and seen it glide off unharmed.
It was not a shadow of sentiment, but a being who sought vengeance for
the butchery of the little band of heroes, for the brave comrades who
grouped themselves about the noble Custer and fought to the death.
When the soldiers moved out of the valley, leaving so many graves behind
them, the wolves rushed out from canon, ravine and den, to dig up the
fresh earth and mutilate the dead. The shadow was there--a solitary,
mysterious and vigilant sentinel to guard those sacred mounds. It
screamed and gestured at the fierce beasts, it fired upon them with
rifle and revolver and struck them with bright, keen sabre. The wolves
ran here and there, from grave to grave, gnashing their teeth in anger,
but the shadow closely pursued them. They formed in groups in the
midnight darkness and waited for the shadow to tire out and fall asleep
or go away, but it paced up and down over the graves, vigilant and
unwearied, and daylight came to hurry the wild beasts to their lairs
till another night.
[Illustration: Gathering Up the Dead at Wounded Knee (page 37).]
Hunters and scouts had seen the sentinel-beat among the graves in the
light of noon-day, when men could not be mistaken. The path ran from
grave to grave, winding about to take in every one, and then it ran to
the river and disappeared in a ledge of rocks. Scouts said it was a path
beaten by human feet. The Indians said that a shadow or spirit alone
could remain in that lonely spot, having only the company of wild beasts
and the graves of the lonely dead.
Once when Red Cloud and a trusty few were scouting to learn the
whereabouts of their white foes, they encamped in the valley for the
night. The shadow stole among them as they slept, and when the fierce
scream aroused the band from their slumbers, five of the red men had
been murdered, each throat slashed across with a keen blade. The shadow
stood and jeered at the living, who huddled together like frightened
children. When they fled for their lives it pursued them with drawn
saber, and one of them had a scar on his shoulder to prove he had been
struck with a blade. Next day when a full band of Indians rode into the
valley to solve the mystery and secure revenge, they saw no living
thing. The bodies of the dead warriors were cut and hacked and gashed.
Five of the poor cavalrymen whose brains had been beaten out had been
revenged.
Before the crown of a single grave had sunk down, Crazy Horse started to
cross the valley at midnight with his lodges. The shadow confronted his
band and mocked them, and as the red men hurried along in the darkness,
vividly recalling the mad charge of the cavalry, the strange shadow
skulked along with the column and fired shot after shot into the band.
They fired at it and rushed out to capture it, but it disappeared, as
shadows do. Two squaws, a child or two, an old man and two warriors fell
by the bullets which the shadow fired. From that time the red men
avoided the valley as white men avoid a pest. They would not cross it
or skirt it, even at high noon when the sunshine beat down upon the
graves.
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.
“Here’s yer Injun,” shouted “Doc,” as he untied his lariat from a
blanket and let the bloody head of an Indian roll on the ground near
Stephenson’s feet.
The old squaw came over, took a look, and, uttering a long, doleful
sound like the cry of a wounded wolf, ran inside and grabbing her
blanket, started for the hills, chanting a dismal wail peculiar to her
people when in distress.
“You fellows have played billy hell; you’ve killed my brother-in-law,”
calmly remarked Stephenson as he refilled his pipe and again cast his
one eye toward the north.
“And the best thing you can do is to hit the trail while you are wearing
your scalps,” he continued after a pause of several minutes.
At that moment the old man’s half Indian boy and myself came up from the
corral.
This incident furnished the cause for an ugly Indian fight which
occurred on Rock creek, northeastern Colorado, on June 12, 1877.
“Doc” Kinnie, Charley Hayes and myself had come from Deadwood to
Cheyenne as an escort for a stage coach carrying the Wells-Fargo
express, when Stephenson offered us better pay to work on his cattle
ranch.
Four days before the incident of the bloody head, Stephenson had missed
seven head of cattle and had struck the trail of one Indian who had
driven them off. He rode to the ranch house in high rage and offered
Kinnie and Hayes one hundred dollars if they would recover the cattle
and kill the Indian. In five minutes they were in their saddles riding
to the point where Stephenson indicated the trail. I did not join them,
as Stephenson insisted that two were enough. Kinnie and Hayes had no
difficulty in following the trail of the stolen cattle and were close
on them the next evening. Not caring for a night attack they went into
camp, eating their bacon raw rather than make a fire. They were in their
saddles at the first grey streak of dawn and within an hour came upon
two Indians eating their morning meal in a canon, while the missing
cattle were grazing five hundred yards beyond.
[Illustration: =Charles Hayes, “Doc” Kinnie, Robert McReynolds=.
After the Fight (page 40).]
It was a complete surprise to the Indians, and in the melee that
followed one of them was killed and the other made his escape. It then
became a question of how best to prove to Stephenson that they had
killed the Indian without the burden of taking him back.
Kinnie, who had been a medical student in Ohio before a certain escapade
had caused him to emigrate to the west, suggested the amputation of the
dead Indian’s head as the handiest way, and also suggested that they
keep quiet as to the Indian who got away, lest the old man should only
want to pay one-half of the promised reward.
Hayes stood guard while Kinnie cut and twisted the Indian’s neck until
the head separated from the body. He then rolled it in the Indian’s
blanket and carried it on the pommel of his saddle until the afternoon,
when he rolled the ghastly trophy out on the ground in front of
Stephenson and his squaw wife.
“Seems to me if I had your kind of relations I would pay a better price
and get them all killed off,” said Hayes, as he returned from the
corral.
This remark nettled Stephenson, who smoked his pipe awhile in silence.
He then grew angry, ordered the three of us to hit the trail for Fort
Morgan at once, saying that two thousand Cheyenne Indians would be down
upon us as soon as his squaw could communicate with them. This we
refused to do, as neither Kinnie nor Hayes, nor their horses were in
condition for flight, besides the old man had not settled and we rightly
guessed that he would like to get out of paying the one hundred dollars,
as well as preserve his good standing with the Indians.
Later in the evening he was caught hiding a quantity of Winchester
cartridges. That settled him. We knew then he wanted to see us slain,
while he would endeavor to lay blame upon us. In five minutes he was
bound hand and foot and laid upon a corner in the ranch house upon some
blankets. The Indian boy was also bound and thrown into another corner
for safe keeping. The log ranch house was then loop-holed and our horses
were brought inside, also a quantity of hay, wood and water.
We were prepared for a siege. Kinnie and Hayes lay down to sleep, while
I kept the first watch of the night. All light was extinguished and I
constantly went from loop-hole to loop-hole, peering into the darkness
for the approaching foe, while the old man lay upon his blankets,
swearing like the old sinner he was. I lay down for some sleep in the
after part of the night, leaving the others to watch.
It was daylight when I was awakened by rifle shots. They came from a
hill upon whose crest rode forty Cheyenne warriors, bedecked in feathers
and war paint and stripped for battle.
We made no reply to their shots, but led them to believe by our silence
that the ranch house was deserted.
After pow-wowing for an hour, six of them began advancing cautiously. We
waited they were within a hundred feet of the house, when our rifles
emptied three of the saddles, and two more were riderless before the
sixth retreating Indian reached the main party, which by that time was
in commotion and had begun a circling ride around the ranch house to
prevent our escape.
For the remainder of the day they kept well out of reach of our rifles,
but when night had gathered they stole away their dead and wounded under
cover of darkness. The next morning there was no sign of them. We were
not to be caught, however, by such a ruse, having played the same game
ourselves the morning before. We felt sure they would be reinforced
within two days with an overwhelming force that could easily storm the
house and tear it down over our heads.
Our only hope was to get away, and we held a council of war in whispers.
The old man and boy had been released at intervals to relieve the pain
of the cords, but not a word was said to them of our plans. When
darkness again came we saddled our horses, stored a quantity of
provisions in our blankets, strapped them behind our saddles and filled
our canteens with water.
The Indian boy was then liberated and given these instructions:
“Creep along the banks of the creek until you come to the lone
cottonwood tree, one and one-half miles distant, then fire six shots
from a revolver. This will draw the Indians to you, when you can explain
that we have compelled you to do this. If you fail to fire the shots we
will kill the old man and charge through the Indian lines anyway.”
This command was delivered to the boy in a manner calculated to impress
him with the earnestness of the threat, although it was not our
intention to harm Stephenson, and yet the muzzle of a Winchester close
to his head caused him to earnestly implore the boy to faithfully do as
he was told.
From then the minutes dragged like hours. We watched anxiously from our
loop-holes for the flash from the young Indian’s revolver. Twenty
minutes passed, then thirty, and no shot was fired. Was he playing us
false, or had he been captured by the Cheyennes, who in turn might set a
trap for us. Thirty-six minutes passed, then a spark flashed in the
distance and we counted six shots. This was the critical moment and
every ear was listening for the sounds of horses’ hoofs. A few moments
later we heard them, as they came out of the ravines. We saw them, too,
as they skirted along the dim sky line. We waited a few minutes to give
them time to reach the cottonwood tree and then led our horses out and
rode rapidly away to the northwest, knowing that the clatter of our
horses’ hoofs would mingle with those of the Indian ponies and might
readily be taken for those of their own horsemen.
Our rifles were in our saddle holsters and our heavy revolvers were in
our hands, as we rode in silence. Kinnie was in the lead, while Hayes
and I rode behind side by side. Not a word was spoken for more than five
hours, until day was breaking, and by the red glow of the eastern sky we
saw away down the plains the camp fires and white tents of a troop of
cavalry from Fort Morgan. Kinnie burst out into a long, hearty peal of
laughter.
“What the deuce has struck you now?” asked Hayes.
“I forgot to give daddy any change back,” he replied, as he held up a
well-filled pocketbook.
VII.
A COWBOY DUEL.
Tom Rawlins rolled out of his blankets from under the chuck wagon with
the remark, “I suppose a man shouldn’t be late at his own funeral,” and
walking over to the camp-fire, lit his pipe by the glowing embers.
Day was breaking, and by a solemn compact entered into with “Kid”
Anderson the night before, he would be dead at sunrise.
A month before they had exchanged shots in a dance house in Ogallala,
after quarreling about a woman. The two cowboys met in North Platte the
day before, for the first time since the affair, and each swore the
other should die.
Many of us who were friends of the two men divided into factions and
crowded about the principals. The declaration of war having been made on
both sides, neither could withdraw without losing caste, as such was the
custom in the 70’s among the wild fellows of the plains, who put a
cheap estimate on human life. Rawlins had seen four years’ service in
the Confederate army, and at the close of the war had followed General
Joe Shelby into Mexico and fought under the banner of Maxmilian. When
Bazaine withdrew the French troops he secured his discharge and returned
to Texas wearing the honorable scars of battle. “Kid” Anderson was
inured to the life on the plains from his youth and had been in many an
ugly Indian fight.