were forming for battle behind a ridge that overlooked the Indian camp.
Here Colonel Chivington divided his men, sending a column of twos in
opposite directions so as to surround the camp. The Indians were in
their tepees when the cannon sent a crash of iron into their midst. The
battle was on. Chief White Antelope came rushing from his tepee
brandishing a rifle, urging on his followers. The encircling horsemen
closing in on them emptied their rifles and revolvers into the confused
mass of Indians.
Indian depredations had been so numerous in Colorado and the atrocities
so cruel, that the men, many of whom had been victims of Indian raids
and had lost their all, their families or friends being butchered, gave
no quarter, and when the battle ended they felt even more justified when
there was found within the tepees a number of scalps recently torn from
the heads of white women and children. Nearly 1,000 Indians were killed
when the firing ceased, and a crimson tide ebbed into the creek and
reddened its waters with blood.
A squaw and a boy were found hiding in the tall grass. Murat shot the
squaw and captured the boy. Bott bought the young Indian, intending to
bring him up in civilization. The boy was standing by his side when, an
hour later a pistol shot rang out from a group of men some yards away
and the young Indian fell dead. Bott was angered, and drawing his own
revolver, offered one hundred dollars to anyone who would point out the
man who fired the shot. No one would tell.
Murat with a companion was trying to capture some of the Indians’ horses
far out on the plain, when one of Black Kettle’s fleeing Indians rose
from behind a hillock and shot him dead. White Antelope was killed,
while a large number of Indians under Black Kettle escaped by scattering
like quail over the plain and hiding in the grass.
While the battle was raging the families of many of the soldiers from
Colorado City had gathered in the Anway Fort at that place, and a
telepathic wave of horror spread over all. Many were praying and
weeping, and all seemed to feel that a dreadful thing was being enacted
in which their loved ones were taking part.
When the news of the battle reached the fort and the death of young
Murat was announced, Marie Tinville fell in a swoon, after which her
mind was a blank. From that time on her decline was rapid and in a few
months she was laid in the lonely grave upon the mesa.
After that stories were told of strange things. A white light was seen
about the grave, which vanished on close approach. Once old Ben Jordan
an antelope hunter, came to town at night, his long hair fairly on end,
saying that a white light had risen in front of him near the grave, out
of which protruded a naked arm. The incredulous asked him what he had
been drinking, but he stuck to the story as long as he lived.
George Birdsall, a young man of Colorado City, had heard the story and
thought it all a joke. He recently went out one night to investigate.
He saw no white light, but felt a peculiar rush of cold air and a touch
upon the cheek as soft as if some one had gently kissed him.
XIX.
UNDER THE BLACK FLAG.
As the sun went down below the rolling glassy waters of the gulf of
Mexico, I sat on the hatchway steps of the little steamer Dauntless,
fully realizing for the first time that perhaps before morning I would
be swinging to the yard-arm of a Spanish man-of-war.
I was sick, anyway, and the abominable mixture of whiskey and garlic
which Mark Witherspoon had given me as a preventive against yellow
fever, had made the contemplation worse.
The Dauntless was loaded with arms and munitions of war for the Cuban
Insurgents and if the Spaniards caught us we would doubtless share the
fate of the crew of the Virginius at Santiago de Cuba in 1873.
I had credentials as a newspaper correspondent, but Mark Witherspoon and
I had duly enlisted at Tampa, Florida, in the cause of Cuban liberty,
and we were assigned to the third division of Garcia’s army under
command of General Ruloff.
Our little vessel hugged the Florida Keys for more than a week. Meantime
we were reinforced by small parties of twos and threes, who came in open
boats by night. The stores of rifles, ammunition and dynamite came by
small sailing craft. We now numbered thirty-seven men. Eight of us were
Americans, two were Germans and the others were Cubans from Tampa and
Key West.
On the night we were ready to start the distinguishing lights of a
revenue cutter were seen, so we lay close in a little cove and banked
the fires in our furnace until four o’clock the next afternoon, when we
slipped out and put for the high seas, headed straight for the coast of
Cuba. When night fairly set in, there came small squalls and a drizzling
rain. We had no signal lights out and every sound was muffled, even the
funnel was so protected that not a spark could escape. All night long
everybody was most keenly alert, and it was towards daylight that the
irregular mountain lines of Cuba could be discerned, standing in shadowy
relief against a darkened sky. On entering a little landlocked harbor
we signaled with flash lanterns and were soon answered from the shore.
Nearly a hundred insurgents met us, and the work of unloading quickly
began. During the morning we were reinforced by nearly a hundred more
Cubans who brought ponies and pack mules. As soon as we were unloaded
our vessel hoisted the Danish flag and with all possible speed put out
for the high seas. Her hull was well down on the horizon when we took up
our march inland. Our route lay over tortuous mountain trails over which
our ponies climbed with the agility of goats. The trail was often
dangerous in the extreme, for the slip of a pony’s hoof would have sent
both horse and rider hundreds of feet below. We had taken trails unknown
to the Spanish soldiery.
When about fifty miles in the interior, we reached a plateau and here
found encamped some eight hundred men under General Ruloff. From the
very first I had but little confidence in him. He was a Polish Jew, well
educated in military tactics, but unfitted to conduct a guerrilla
warfare with men like us who were virtually fighting under the black
flag.
Subsequent events proved this, for at the fight of Santo Esperitu we
left our improvised hospital unguarded, and Captain Sandoval cut to our
rear and captured it and after destroying much of our valuable stores,
put every sick man to death.
Our rendezvous lay in the province of Puerto Principe and our line of
action westward. After the fight at Santo Esperitu we never massed in
action, but divided into companies of about one hundred, free to run or
fight as our commander ordered.
Our detachment captured Captain Sandoval and a party of his men, and in
view of his inhuman treatment of our prisoners, he was promptly shot.
Sandoval went to his death as all other cowardly butchers do, trembling
like a leaf in the wind.
We were ordered by Ruloff to burn all azucaderos (sugar mills) and to
blow up with dynamite all railroad culverts and bridges and to destroy
all telegraph lines. Our division frequently made rapid raids, always
gaining ground westward. The division to which we were attached raided
the town of San Lazaro which was defended by a small body of Spaniards.
We routed them and captured some two hundred Mauser rifles and a large
quantity of ammunition and other military stores. Our commander then
ordered the execution of the alcalde (mayor) for having betrayed a
number of insurgent sympathizers, causing them to be shot, and their
families to be driven through the streets, beaten with sticks.
Early in November we were encamped near Nuevitas where we had lain
inactive for several days. One afternoon scouts had reported an
advancing column and we had chosen for our ambuscade the ruins of a
stone building, now overgrown with vines and nearly hidden from view by
a cactus thicket.
There was a hushed stillness in the dark forest that lay beyond the long
yellow road, and in the cane fields that stretched away for leagues to
our right. To the left the San de Cubitas mountains, with their covering
of dense tropical vegetation, rose dark and silent. A lookout had
climbed a tall cebra tree and was watching with a field glass. He
suddenly gave the signal. Then the men were told in whispers each to
select a man and to fire at a given order. The Cuban sun blazed hotly
down that day. The air was close and stifling in our position behind the
cactus thicket and our hearts beat quick and fast in those moments of
waiting. There was the low rumble of horses hoofs, a cloud of yellow
dust arose from down the road, and soon the Spanish column was almost
abreast the 150 rifles that pointed from behind the stone wall. I peered
over the sights of my Winchester and drew a bead on the breast of a
young officer. He was chatting gaily with a companion and as he turned
his face revealed a handsome countenance. It was a boyish face with the
dawn of manhood just settling upon the brow. Thoughts crowded each other
in my mind just then: Perhaps the young man was a conscript, not here by
his own choice to imperil his young life, and I, whom he had never
wronged, an unsuspected foe, safely hid in the cactus thicket behind the
stone wall, about to send his soul into eternity. I lowered my aim from
his breast to his horse just behind the shoulder. The order came to
fire. The trigger that would have pulled like a ton weight a second
before pulled easily now. And so all through those dreadful volleys that
we poured into the struggling ranks. For firing into a mass of men is a
different thing from that of firing upon one man singly. When the smoke
of battle cleared away more than forty of the routed Spanish column lay
dead or wounded in the road. I went to the place where the young
trooper’s horse had fallen and there lay the young officer pinioned
underneath with a broken leg. I felt that I wanted to help him. I knew
from the look on his manly face that in private life he would have been
my friend, but to show a kindly feeling at that time would have made me
a suspect among my comrades in arms. Their machetes flashed in the
sunlight and their strokes falling swift and fast reddened the soil of
Puerto Principe. Mark and I stood silent, helpless spectators of the
horrors of war and revenge, wreaked by men, who in the remembrance of
wrongs and outrage, were lost to any feeling of common humanity. There
was only one act of kindness which I dared perform. In the pocket of his
blood-stained blouse I found a letter. It was from his mother in
Seville, and bore a mother’s love and sister’s prayer for his safe
return. When I afterwards landed at Galveston, I sent it to his home,
with an account of how he died upon the battlefield.
The blazing sun was yet high when we were in our saddles and moving
away. I saw a vulture circling above the battlefield, one, two, then a
dozen, then a score. These black-winged scavengers had scented death,
and there let contemplation end. Night comes suddenly in the tropics,
when the sun dips beyond the sea, but here and there in the valley were
lights, lantern like at first, spreading soon like a long prairie fire.
They were in the cane fields which our men were firing, and as the
flames swept on, the bursting stalks sounded like a battle with light
revolvers. It lit the night, and its glare and gloom added mystery to
the dark forest beyond the road. Morning came and we were safely
encamped amid the hills. The birds sang merrily and the sun dried the
dew upon the tall, rank grass, and when it came roll call, two names
were stricken off. They had reported the day before to the Great
Commander of the great beyond.
XX.
IN CUBAN JUNGLES.
Spies brought news of an encampment of Spanish infantry a day’s march
ahead. All was hustle in the Cuban insurgent camp. Twenty-eight Texans
who had recently joined our command were allowed the privilege of
leading our column to the attack. That day we followed circuitous
mountain trails and encamped at night in the heart of a dense forest
through whose trailing vines we made our way along the bridle paths. By
4 o’clock in the morning we were again in the saddle. There was no blare
of trumpet or beat of drums to announce our coming as our column of
horsemen stole from out the silent forest and wound along the road like
a great creeping serpent to strike death.
The Spanish camp was beyond a small stream through which we were to
charge. Halting a mile beyond their picket lines, saddle girths were
tightened, weapons were looked to, and we formed in a column of fours.
Americans to the front, and ready for the charge. Ten stalwart Cubans
were selected to form the skirmish line two hundred yards in advance and
engage the enemy when they reached the banks of the stream. The column
was then to charge at a gallop and use the revolver and machete.
The first rays of the sun were gilding the mountain crests and awakening
the flamingoes around the lagoons when a Spanish sentry’s rifle told the
moment of action had come.
On pressed our column at double quick, while the increased firing ahead
warned us that the Spanish camp was aroused. There was the heavy rattle
of Mauser rifles, followed by the sharper report of Winchesters as our
advance guard reached the stream and drew aside to let our column pass.
The little river flowed from the mountains and plunged over rock and
cliff in wild tumult. Below the ford which we were crossing there were
falls and as the Spaniards fired a volley that struck our column midway
in the stream, they emptied many saddles, while wounded men were
carried down to watery graves.
The Spaniards threw a double cordon of infantry at bayonet charge
against our cavalry, but the Texans’ revolvers opened a gap and the
column rode through the demoralized camp, doing its fearful work. On the
column plunged, fire leaping from the deadly revolvers on either side.
When beyond the Spanish camp, the bugle sounded wheel, and back we rode
among the panic stricken soldiers, dealing death until they broke in
confusion, and gained the cover of the forest. We halted long enough to
gather up our wounded and burn the supply train. An hour later and we
were in full retreat to our rendezvous in the San de Cubitas mountains.
One evening Mark and I started for the vicinity of an azucadero, where
we knew there was a patch of sweet potatoes. The night was dark, damp
and chilly, and the road lay through a clearing of tall palms whose
white trunks stood like ghostly sentinels. The silence was unbroken save
by the sound of horses’ hoofs, the croaking of frogs and the distant
baying of dogs about some negro casa. We did not suppose there was a
Spaniard within fifty miles of us, and as we rode our ponies silently
along a horseman suddenly appeared in front of us, and in clear
Castilian tones shouted: “Quien vive!” “Cuba Libre!” cried Mark, drawing
his machete and spurring his horse forward. At the same instant I
discharged my revolver full in the sentinel’s face. We wheeled our
horses and rode quickly into the clearing, knowing better than to
retreat by the road we came. It was well we did not, for soon a body of
Spanish cavalry came tearing down the road, firing a volley ahead at
random. We rode on through the clearing, being now cut off from our
command. At length we came to a creek whose banks were steep and fringed
on either side by trees, from whose branches hung a network of tangled
vines and creepers. The water flowed sluggishly, as most streams in Cuba
do. We determined to cross the creek at once, knowing that with the
first streak of dawn we would be tracked, for we had left an easy trail
in the soft soil. We used our machetes with great difficulty to cut a
path through the vines, and when we reached the water’s edge swam our
ponies across and cut our way through on the opposite bank where we lay
down to await developments of the morning. Both of us must have fallen
asleep, for we were startled by a loud grito alto from the other side of
the creek. Peering through the bushes we saw a Spanish trooper
gesticulating to a party of cavalry in the rear. In another second there
was the simultaneous report of our two Winchesters and the trooper
rolled from his horse. We hurriedly mounted our ponies amid the
fusillade of bullets from the approaching squad of cavalry, and spurring
our horses toward a cane field, we were soon hidden. A little later we
abandoned our horses and started them off in another direction with a
lashing, thinking thereby to gain time and elude our pursuers. Then we
started for the azucadero. It was our first intention to fire it,
thinking its flames would attract the attention of our command and bring
us relief. But as we came out of the cane field we saw a body of
troopers crossing a bridge which spanned the creek. We did not think
they saw us, and in our haste to find a hiding place we ran around the
building to a well which supplied the boilers. Leaping on a platform we
found a lot of empty sugar hogsheads standing on end near a lot of
filled ones. We quickly rolled an empty beside them and turned the open
end down, getting under it. The troopers had seen us and tracked us
straight to the well. They supposed we had descended by means of the
pump pipe and hidden our bodies in the water, for they began hurling
stones in the water and with a mixture of Spanish oaths called us “Perro
Americano” (dog American). Satisfied with their work of exterminating us
in the well, they rode away.
Meanwhile we were couched in close quarters, with our revolvers tightly
clenched, determined to sell out as dearly as possible. When they had
gone, Mark whispered, “I am badly shot,” indicating the spot by placing
his hand upon his abdomen. The morning wore away and our situation was
becoming unbearable. We were cramped and almost suffocated. Mark had
swooned away twice in the agony of pain. Fortunately we had filled our
canteens from the brackish waters of the creek, which alleviated our
sufferings some. Yet it was past noon before we ventured out. I helped
Mark inside the azucadero, where he laid down upon a pile of cane
refuse, while I examined his wound. One look was enough. The contents
of the abdomen were oozing out through the wound, and I knew that was a
fatal sign. I carried a pocket case containing a few medicines for an
emergency, among which was some morphine. I gave him an eighth grain
tablet which relieved him some, but at times his pain grew so great that
he begged me to shoot him.
We could hear distant firing during the afternoon, but the sounds were
growing fainter and we knew our command was retreating. When night came
on I gave Mark another tablet of morphine and lay down for some rest.
The dreadful chill that always follows a gunshot wound had set in, but I
had no blankets or other coverings with which to lessen his sufferings.
Thoroughly exhausted myself, I soon fell asleep, and when I awoke late
in the night, I was alone with the dead. For me to bury him was
impossible, and I could not think of leaving him there a prey to the
vultures. So I did what I should have wanted him to do for me had our
places been reversed. Sorrowfully I left him alone in the now burning
azucadero and while the flames of his funeral pyre were lighting the
night, I started for the sea.
That day I fell in with a party of insurgents who were on their way to
the coast to meet another filibustering vessel. As malaria and the
effects of climate were telling heavily upon me, they kindly gave me aid
in boarding the craft, by which I afterwards landed at the docks at New
Orleans, feeling that I had done my share in the cause of Cuban
liberty.
XXI.
EMULOUS OF WASHINGTON.
“I don’t know that I can tell you fellows about the first dollar I ever
earned,” said W. P. Epperson, the pioneer editor of the Colorado
City--------, “but I do know the first and last lie I ever told.”
“You ought to remember, seeing that it has not been over twenty
minutes,” said George Geiger.
“Twenty minutes be smashed!” yelled Epperson, reaching for his gun,
“it’s been twenty years this summer. My first lie was a trivial one
about fishing, and the last happened in this way.”
“Twenty years, did you say?” interrupted the hired man with an
incredulous look.
“That’s what I mean,” and the veteran editor took another chew of Battle
Ax, while a halo of white settled down about his head.
“In the autumn of 1885,” he continued, “I stepped off a Union Pacific
train at Silver Creek, Nebraska, and after a good supper I determined
to drive across the country to Osceola, a distance of thirty miles. The
driver of the livery rig was about the most handsomely attired imitation
of a cow boy I had ever seen. He wore a new suit of corduroy with a
broad sombrero and high-heeled boots with ornamented red tops, also a
bright blue shirt and a rattlesnake skin necktie. I had him sized up for
a green country boy from Indiana or Illinois who had seen but little of
frontier life, and he confirmed my suspicions a little later as we were
crossing the Platte River bridge by saying, ‘I suppose if you knew what
my business had been you would hesitate to ride with me alone on the
plains at night.’
“It was getting dark and we were crossing a wide stretch of the then
desolate plain that lay between the Platte River and Osceola. I was
enjoying a cigar and felt at peace with all the world, when a devilish
thought struck me, and I asked, ‘What has been your business?’
“‘Well, sir,’ he replied, ‘I have been a cow boy.’
“‘The deuce you have,’ said I, ‘Shake, old man, you are a fellow after
my own heart, and since you have been so kind to tell me your business,
I will let you know who I am. I, sir, am Doc Middleton.’
“The fellow almost fell from his seat in surprise. Doc Middleton was the
notorious outlaw whose depredations had become so terrorizing to the
settlers of Nebraska that the State had offered a reward of $5,000 for
his capture, dead or alive. I enjoyed the joke I was playing all the
more when I saw the effect of my speech.
“‘Just now,’ I continued, ‘I am trying to get away from a sheriff’s
posse; that is why I am making the cut across the country. They may
overtake us, and if they do, there will be some heavy shooting.’
“‘With this I drew a big Colt revolver from my overcoat pocket and I
said I had two more like it in my valise. I also told him if they
overtook us he must get down by the dashboard and drive for dear life,
that he might get shot in the back, but that would be cow boy’s luck.
By this time he was nervous and began looking backwards as he whipped
the ponies up at a lively gait. I did not pretend to notice it and so
kept up my lying.
“‘The first man I ever killed,’ I told him, ‘was a one-eyed man in Utah,
who called me a liar, and I threw his body over a cliff, and my
conscience hurt me for full half an hour afterwards. After that I soon
got so I loved to blow a man’s head off just to see his brains fly.’
“It had grown quite dark, and having nothing better to do, I told him
all the bloody stories I could think of and claimed them as my own
experience until I became tired of the foolishness and lapsed into
silence. We had made about half our journey and were passing a farm
house set in a dense grove of trees. There were lights in the house and
the young man broke the silence by asking, ‘Please, dear Mister Doc
Middleton, may I go in and get a drink of water? I think I have got a
fever in my throat.’
“‘Certainly, my boy, certainly,’ I replied taking the lines. He slid off
the rig and ran to the house, while I sat there like a fool holding the
horses. About twenty minutes passed and he did not return. Then I
noticed the lights in the house had been extinguished. I called loudly
for the young man to return, and when it flashed over my mind that to
him I was the outlaw Doc Middleton, and he might warn the farmer of my
presence, who might even then be waiting to get a shot at me, I yelled
again for him in fear, louder than before, but there was no response.
The more I thought of my predicament, the more nervous I became, until
the cold sweat stood out like beads on my face.
“I could stand it no longer, and seizing the whip, I cut the horses a
lash and crouched down by the dashboard just as I had been instructing
the young man to do. In the sudden dash, the horses broke one of the
buggy springs, and I wandered on the plains until morning, for I had
missed the Osceola road. It cost me $2 to have the spring mended and $5
to send a man back to Silver Creek with the rig, to say nothing of being
scared within an inch of my life.”
XXII.
ON THE ROUND UP.
The round-up of today differs in no essential particular from that of
former years, excepting in the number of cattle rounded up and the
number of men and horses required in its working.
In 1900 I spent some months on a ranch in northern Colorado, where there
are still large bunches of cattle.