AT THE FRONT.
Rare indeed is a day in June! Warmth and fragrance, sunshine and roses,
strawberries, straw hats, summer costumes, music and moonlight, soft
zephyrs, softer speeches, softest of swains have we left at the Point.
Farewells--sweet, sad, sentimental some of them--have been said. The
corps of cadets has gone to the Centennial with thousands of sight-seers
from all over the nation. They hardly had dared hope for such an
unaccustomed delight. They had not expected to go, but went. The nation
flocks to Philadelphia, but out in the Northwest some hundreds of its
defenders are flocking in another direction. Come with us and take
another look at our old friends of the --th. They had expected to go,
but didn't.
It is a rare, rare day in June, but where are the soft breezes, the
sweet fragrance, the blossoms and the bliss of that month of months at
the dear old Point? Rare indeed is the breeze, cloudless the sky,
brilliant, beaming, magnificent, the sunshine, but not a leaf stirs in
answering rustle to the wind. Far and near no patch of shade delights
or tempts the eye. Look where you will,--look for miles and miles over
boundless expanse of rolling upland, of ridge and ravine, of dip and
"divide," of butte and swale, no speck of foliage, no vision is there of
even isolated tree. The solid earth beneath our feet is carpeted with
dense little bunches of buffalo-grass, juicy, life-giving, yet bleaching
already of the faint hues of green that came peeping through the last
snows left in May. Tiny wild flowers purple the surface near us, but
blend into the colorless effect of the general distance. We stand on a
wave of petrified ocean, tumbling in wild upheaval close at hand;
stretching away to the east in a league-long level flat as the barn
floor of tradition, and bare as the description.
Far to the east the prairie rolls up to the horizon wave after wave till
none is seen beyond. Far to the north, bare and treeless, too, the same
effect is maintained. Far to the south, across an intervening low-land
one would call a valley elsewhere, the ground rises against the sky,
until its monotonous gray-green meets the gray-blue of the southern
heaven; but west of south, what have we here? The farthest wave of
prairie surges, not against the naked sky, but against a cold gray
range, whose peaks and turrets are seamed and sprinkled with glistening
snow. Aye, there they stand, the monarchs of the Rockies; there through
the short summer sunshine their lofty crests defy the melting rays and
bear their plumage through the very dog-days, to greet and welcome the
first, faint, timid snow-flakes of the early fall. There they gleam and
glisten, no longer as we saw them from the Kansas plains, dim in the
western distance, unapproachable, but close at hand, neighborly,
sheltering, for we nestle under their very shoulders. Here, to the west,
just behind us, no great day's walk away and seemingly far nearer, in
jagged outline against the blue of heaven, are the guardians of the old
transcontinental pass. Here, to the west, where you see the rugged spurs
jutting out from the range, runs the old trail which the engineers have
followed, and carried the Union Pacific to its greatest altitude between
the oceans. Far out there among the buttes runs that climbing ridge, yet
it seems so close, so neighborly with the foreshortening of that strange
scenery, that one cannot realize that in its climb it carries the iron
rails still two thousand feet farther aloft. For years we have read of
the Rockies, and is this possible? Do you mean that here, with this
expanse of level prairie before us, we are up among the clouds, so to
speak,--far up on the very backbone of the continent, and that is why,
instead of towering thousands of feet aloft in air, the great
peaks--Long's and Hahn's and Pike's--seem so near us to the south'ard
and no higher at all? Aye, call it prairie level if you will, for
straight to the east it looks as flat as Illinois, but we are standing
six thousand feet higher in air than the highest steeple in Chicago, and
our prairie flat is but the long, long slope of mountain-side that
begins in the Black Hills of Wyoming--back at Cheyenne Pass--and ends at
the forks of the Platte down near Julesburg.
You say it must be up-hill to that ridge that meets the horizon at the
east. Is it? Look over here to our left front, a little to the
northeast. See that tiny lake surrounded by low, wooden buildings, and
approached by the hard, beaten road from the distant town. A pleasure
resort of some kind, judging from the streamers and bright flags about
the place. It stands on a hill, does it not? and the hill has risen
gradually from the west, but slopes abruptly again to the east and south
to the general level. Did you ever see a lake on a hill before? How does
the water get there? Springs? No. Mark that slender rivulet that runs
from far up the ravine at the southwest; it crosses the prairie in the
near distance, and then goes twisting and turning up that apparent slope
until it reaches the little lake on the hill. The outlet, you say? Yes.
From here it certainly looks so, but step forward a few hundred feet and
look at the rivulet, and by all that's marvellous! the water is running
up-hill.
So it certainly seems, but the explanation is simple. The prairie is not
horizontal by any means. It is a gradual but decided slope to the east,
and the top of the little hill two miles away is forty feet lower than
the point on which you stand.
Then how deceptive is the distance! Across the level to the southeast
lies the bustling frontier city. You wonder to see glistening dome and
spire far out there under the very shadow of the Rockies. At least you
would have wondered a decade ago in the Centennial year. You note the
transparency of the atmosphere. Science has told you that at such an
altitude the air is rarefied. There is no light haze to soften outlines
and to lend enchantment to a distant view. Roof, spire, chimney, all
stand out clear and hard, and the coal-smoke from the railway blots the
landscape where it rises, yet is quickly scattered by the mountain
breeze. Between you and the little town lies the prairie over which the
stage road runs straight and hard as a pike until, nearing us, it begins
to twist and turn among the foot-hills for a climb across the ridge into
the valley of Lodge Pole Creek beyond. Lodge Pole indeed! The creek
valley has not a stick of timber far as one can see it. Follow it to its
source, two days' trot or tramp up towards Cheyenne Pass, and there you
find them, as the Sioux did twenty years ago, before we bade them seek
their lodge-poles farther north. How far is it to the prairie
metropolis,--a mile and a half, you venture? My friend, were you an
artillerist, and were you to sight a two-hundred-pounder to throw a
shell into Cheyenne from where we stand, "setting your sights for three
thousand yards,"--more than your mile and a half,--the shell would rip
up the prairie turf somewhere down there where you see the road crossing
that _acequia_. Cheyenne lies a good four miles away, and is a good deal
bigger than you take it to be. But here to the south lies a strange
diamond-shaped enclosure,--a queer arrangement of ugly brown wooden
barns and sheds far out all by itself on the bare bosom of the prairie.
That is _called_ a frontier fort. It is not a fort. It never has been.
Even tradition cannot be summoned to warrant the name. It was built
after our great civil war, and named for one of the gallant generals who
fell fighting in the Shenandoah Valley. It has neither stockade nor
simplest defensive work. It is all it can do to stand up against a
"Cheyenne zephyr," and a shot fired at one end of it would go clean
through to the other without meeting anything sufficiently solid to
deflect it from its course. It is a fort by courtesy, as some of our
non-combatants are generals by brevet, and would be as valuable in time
of defensive need. All around it, east, west, and north, sweeps the
level prairie. South of its unenclosed limits there flows a
rapid-running stream, down in whose barren valley are placed the long
unsightly wooden stables, the big square corrals for quartermaster's
stock, the huge stacks of hay and straw, and vast piles of cord-wood.
Farther east along this tortuous stream, and on its left bank, too,
midway between fort and city, is another big brown enclosure, in which
are dozens of sheds and storehouses. It is a great supply depot for
quartermaster's stores and ordnance, and over it, as over the fort,
flutters the little patch of color which stamps the property as Uncle
Sam's. For reasons that can soon be explained only small-sized flags are
ever hoisted near Cheyenne. By noon of three hundred days a year,
straight from the wild pass to the west, there comes sweeping down a
gale that would snap the stoutest flag-staff into flinders, and that
whips even a storm-flag threadbare in a few brief weeks.
But it is a rare June morning now, too early for the "zephyr," and
nature beams and sparkles even over such bare landscape. The air is
crisp, cool, invigorating. Far out on the slopes and side hills great
herds of horses and mules are grazing, guarded by vigilant troopers,
some alert in saddle, others prone upon the turf. Out along the road
from town comes a train of white-covered wagons slowly crawling
northward, with stores and supplies for the army up in the Indian
country, and down here to our right front, covering the flat between
fort and depot, blocked out in regular rows and groups, dotting the
plain with gleaming canvas, is the camp of the --th regiment of cavalry.
For the first time since the war of the rebellion two-thirds of its
entire strength is massed under command of its senior officer.
Morning mounted drill is just over, and the two battalions, having
unsaddled and turned the horses out to graze, are now busily occupied
about the camp. The soft notes of the trumpet sounding "Officer's Call"
has drawn to the colonel's tent a knot of tanned and athletic men in
rough field uniform and bristling beards. Those who best know the --th
will be quicker to recognize old friends in this guise than when in the
glitter of parade uniform or the accurate and irreproachable evening
dress of civilization. There is not a man in the group who is not quite
at his ease in ball-room attire; most of them have held acquaintance
time and again with the white tie and stiff "choker" of conventionality,
but the average gallant of metropolitan circles would turn up his
supercilious nostrils at the bare suggestion were he to see them now.
The --th is in its element, however, for the order has come, and with
the coming dawn it will be on the march for the Black Hills of Dakota,
and the colonel has summoned the officers to his tent for some final
instructions. It must be conceded that they look like business in their
dark-blue flannel shirts, their "reinforced" riding-breeches, the
substantial boots, and the field blouses and broad-brimmed campaign hats
that Arizona suns and storms have long since robbed of gloss or
freshness. The faces are strong and virile in almost every case. It is
ten days since the razor has profaned a single chin, and very stubbly
and ugly do they look, but long experience has taught them that the
sooner the beard is allowed to sprout when actual campaigning is to be
done the greater the eventual comfort. Occasionally some fellow draws
off the rough leather gauntlet, and then the contrast between his
blistered, wind-and-sun tanned face and the white hand is startling.
Every man is girt with belt of stout make, and wears his revolver and
hunting-knife,--the sabre is discarded by tacit consent,--its last
appearance for many a long month. Some of the number, indeed, have taken
the order to prepare for campaign work as a permit to doff the uniform
entirely. Gruff old Stannard hates the blouse on general principles, and
looks solid and "stocky" in his flannel shirt; not a vestige of "rank"
can be found about him. Turner and old Wilkins, Crane and Hunter, are of
his way of thinking, but others who preserve the military proprieties to
the last are still garbed in the undress uniform coat. Perhaps they are
thinking of the good-byes to be said in the garrison to-night. Less than
twenty officers are there who report in answer to the signal, and,
having saluted the colonel, dispose themselves on the few camp-stools or
on the grass and wait for his remarks.
Some are old friends, and some old friends are absent. It is odd to
think of the --th being here in force without Truscott, or Ray, or old
Bucketts, the men we knew so well in Arizona. Colonel Pelham is, of
course, not looked for: he is far too old to be in saddle on so hard a
campaign as this promises to be. Truscott's troop is not yet here, but
is under orders to remain in Kansas for the present, and he, we know, is
far away at the Point. Ray, with one of the captains whom we have yet
to meet, and with Mr. Gleason, is still detained on that horse
board,--very reluctantly, too, fretting himself into a fever over it say
some accounts, and other accounts say worse. Bucketts, as quartermaster,
is behind at Hays gathering up the fragments that remain and shipping
property to the new station. Captain Canker is here: he was East with
his wife and little ones, vastly enjoying the surf at Cape May, when the
telegram reached him saying that the --th were off for the wars again,
and within twelve hours he was in pursuit. Four of the group now waiting
around the colonel's tent came in just that way.
"Gentlemen," says the colonel, stepping quickly from the tent, "I called
you here for a word or two. First, there will be forty new horses here
at three this afternoon. They will be distributed according to color
among the eight companies, five to each. See to it that they are shod
first thing. There will be twenty in the next lot; they are to be left
here for Webb and Truscott. Overhaul your ammunition and equipments at
once, and if anything is lacking, you can draw from Cheyenne depot this
afternoon. I presume those of you who are to take station at Russell
will want to go over to see about your quarters, but my advice is that
only those who have families make any selection: there will be some
changes by the time we get back. We march at six in the morning, so have
everything cleared up to-day. There will be no further drill. Those who
have business to attend to in town or at the fort can leave camp without
further permission. I shall remain here until we start, and one officer
from each troop must be in camp, at stables, and during night. That's
all, unless somebody has questions to ask." And the colonel looks
inquiringly around.
Apparently nobody has, and the group breaks up. Some few of the older
officers remained to talk over the prospects at the colonel's tent.
Others went to the garrison to rejoin anxious wives and children, and to
spend the last day with them in helping get things settled in the new
army homes to which they had been so suddenly moved. A third party, "the
youngsters," or junior officers, sauntered across the intervening
stretch of prairie towards the low wooden building standing just north
of the entrance-gate of the fort. In old army days 'twas known as "the
sutler's." In modern parlance it is simply called "the store." The
middle room of which, fitted up with a couple of old-fashioned
billiard-tables, a huge coal stove, some rough benches, chairs, two or
three round tables, and the inevitable bar and cigar-stand, bore on the
portals the legend "officers'," as distinguished from the general
"club-room" beyond.
Seated around the room in various attitudes of _ennui_ and dejection
were three or four infantry officers stationed at the post, while at one
of the tables a trio of young lieutenants were killing time after
morning drill in the fascination of "limited draw." Target practice, as
now conducted, was then unknown, or there would have been no time to
kill. The announcement languidly conveyed from the occupant of the
window-seat, "A squad of the --th coming," produced neither sensation
nor visible effect.
A minute more, however, and the door burst open, and in they came, half
a dozen glowing, breezy, vigorous young cavalrymen, ruddy with health,
elastic with open-air life and exercise, brimful of good spirits and
cordiality, and headed by the declamatory Blake, who made a bee-line for
the bar, shouting,--
"'An if a man did need a poison now,
Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him.'
His name's Muldoon, and he's a fluid man. Step out, Muldoon. What'll ye
have, fellers?" he asked, with the sudden transition from the sublime to
the ridiculous, which was one of Blake's delights. "Name your respective
pizens, gentlemen. Come, join us, ye gallants of mud-crushers. What, ho!
Poker?" and with one stride he was at the table and peering over the
hands: "No use, Sammy,--
'Two queens with but a single ace,
Two sharps that beat as one.'
That's no hand to tackle a one-card draw with. Never you mind whether
he's bluffing or not. There ain't enough in that pot to warrant the
expense of testing the question. Take another deal. _What_ did you say,
Muldoon? Whiskey? No! Throw whiskey to the dogs; I'll none of it. Give
me foaming lager. That's right, my doughboy ancient. Didn't I tell you
to take another hand? What says the inimitable Pope?--
'Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare,
And Sammy scoops us with a single pair.'"
"Good heavens! Blake. Give us a rest! Here, swallow your beer, or take
something to choke you," laughed the victim at the table, while a chorus
of groans saluted Blake's unconscionable parodies. "If you were to be
here a week longer I vow I'd go mad. The best news I've heard in a year
is that you're ordered to march in the morning. What quarters did you
choose?"
"What difference does it make to you, Rags?" put in Mr. Dana. "You
fellows will have the post to yourselves all summer, anyhow. We shan't
get out so much as a chair until we come back from the campaign."
"Well, the married officers have chosen theirs, you know. Stannard's
traps are all moved into No. 11, and they are pretty nearly settled
already,--the carpets were all down yesterday. So they were at Turner's.
Mrs. Whaling has been helping them unpack for the last three days, and
telling everybody what they had and didn't have. I tell you what,
fellows, we're going to have no end of a good time here this summer with
your band and all the ladies while you're roughing it out on the Big
Horn. Whaling says he'll bet a hat none of you get back before
Thanksgiving."
"Is it so that Truscott comes here with his troop?" asked one of the
captains of Lieutenant Crane.
"Well, the troop comes, but as to Truscott, that's another matter."
"I don't understand you, Crane," said Mr. Blake, with sudden change from
his roystering manner. "I thought you heard Ray say that he knew
Truscott would be after us as soon as it was settled that we would take
the field."
"Ray knew no more about it than you do, Blake," was the impatient reply.
"Ray has a fashion of being oracular where Truscott is concerned as
though he were on intimate and confidential terms with him. Now I, for
one, don't believe he had any authority whatever for saying what he
did."
"Well, hold on here," said Blake, deliberately. "My recollection is that
Ray only spoke of it as his conviction,--not that Truscott had told him
anything; still, he was certain that Truscott would come, and that he
would lose no time in getting relieved either. You know he is at the
Point," he said, in explanation, to the silent infantryman.
"Well, I'm d----d if I can understand it in him," muttered Wilkins, as he
buried his broad face in a beer-mug.
"No, Wilkins, I dare say you can't," was the drawling reply, and the
sarcasm was not lost among the listeners, though it missed its effect on
the stolid object. "Truscott, Ray, Heath, and Wayne, and Canker, are not
the style of men to spend this summer, of all others, away from the
regiment."
"Well, here we are, marching to-morrow, and where are your Ray and
Truscott?" asked Wilkins, with as near an approach to a sneer as he dare
venture.
Blake rose quickly from his chair, near where the trio still continued
their game, though by this time far more interested in the tone of the
talk than in "ten-cent ante." Dana and Hunter, too, were flushing and
looking ill at ease.
"This is no time or place to be discussing regimental matters," said he;
"but since the matter has come to it, I mean to give what I believe to
be the general opinion as opposed to that of a limited few. Crane,
Wilkins, you are the only men I have heard express any doubts as to
Truscott's coming, or Ray's, for that matter. I've got just fifty
dollars here to bet against your ten that if this regiment has any
fighting to do this summer they'll both be in it."
"I'm not making bets on any such event, Blake, and I did not mean to
intimate that they were not apt to come," said Crane, conscious that he
had been incautious.
"Well, you then, Wilkins," said Blake, impulsively. "I want this thing
clinched. It is the third or fourth time I've heard you half sneering
about these two men. It's bad enough in the regiment, but you are
talking now in a bar-room and among outsiders. By Jove! if there's no
other way, I say stop it."
There was an embarrassed silence. This was a new trait in Blake, one of
the most jovial, whole-souled, rattle-brained fellows imaginable
ordinarily, but now he seemed transformed. For years the regiment had
been serving by itself. Now for the first time it was thrown into
contact with the comparative strangers of the infantry. These gentlemen,
too, were ill at ease at the suppressed feeling in the conversation, but
Wilkins was "mulish" at times, and he had a reserve.
"If you know Truscott's coming it ain't fair to bet," he muttered,
sulkily; "but you'd better go slow on backing Ray; that's my advice,
Blake, unless you've more money than you know what to do with."
"All the same, I stand by my bet. Do you take it?"
"Oh, dash your bet! Blake, I'm no betting man; but you'd better be
certain what Ray's doing before you champion him so glibly. Perhaps I
know more than you think."
Blake's face clouded a little.
"I don't like your hints, Wilkins. We all know, of course, that Ray has
been wild and reckless many a time, but he is disbursing officer of that
horse board; he is the man of all others on it to decide what they'll
take and what they won't take. Buxton knows mighty little about horses
and will vote as Ray does, so that leaves the responsibility with him.
He never failed us yet, and, by gad! I don't believe he will now."
"All right! Blake, just you wait. All I've got to say is that if Ray
wants to keep his skirts out of the mud he'd better quit the company of
that fellow Rallston, and I hear he's with him day and night, and has
done no little drinking and card-playing with him already. _I_ don't say
gambling, but there's those that do," continued Wilkins, hotly.
"More than that," he went on, after a pause. "When Wayne came through
Kansas City, Gleason and Buxton were at the train to meet him, but they
didn't know, they said, where Ray was. _I_ heard he was at the hotel
sick; been on a tear, I suppose."
"See here, Wilkins, unless you can prove it let up on this sort of talk.
Ray told Stannard when he went on this detail that he would touch no
card so long as he was disbursing officer, and that he'd let John
Barleycorn alone. Now, do you know he has been on any spree?"
"No, I don't know it, Blake, and yet I'm certain of it just from past
experience with him."
"By gad! you're as bad as old Backbite himself. Do you remember that
time Chip of the artillery was walking down Nassau Street, and a
steam-boiler or something burst under the sidewalk and broke his leg?
The first thing old Backbite said when he heard of it was, 'H'm! been
drinking, I suppose.' Now here's Billings with a despatch. What is it,
bully rook?" he hailed, as the adjutant came bounding in.
"Truscott starts to-night, and the horse board will break up next week,
so we'll have Jack and Ray with us inside of ten days."
"_Pre_cisely. Now, Wilkins, if you want a nice mud-bath for your head,
there's an elegant spot back of the stables. Come on, Billings, I'm
going to camp."
And with that he left, followed by all the cavalrymen but Wilkins and
his associate Crane. The latter held the ground, and, as they were
plainly the defeated parties in the argument so far, human nature
demanded that Mr. Wilkins should set himself right in the eyes of the
reluctant auditors, and so it happened that among the officers composing
what might be termed the permanent garrison of the post the first
impressions received of Mr. Ray were conveyed by a tongue as ill
regulated as--other people's children.