The car had been side-tracked at Fort Keough, and on the following
morning the porter shook me, and announced that it was five o’clock.
An hour later I stepped out on the rear platform, and observed that
the sun would rise shortly, but that meanwhile the air was chill, and
that the bald, square-topped hills of the “bad lands” cut rather hard
against the gray of the morning. Presently a trooper galloped up with
three led horses, which he tied to a stake. I inspected them, and saw
that one had a “cow saddle,” which I recognized as an experiment
suggested by the general. The animal bearing it had a threatening
look, and I expected a repetition of a performance of a few days
before, when I had chased the general for over three hours, making in
all twenty-eight miles.
Before accepting an invitation to accompany an Indian commission into
the Northwest I had asked the general quietly if this was a
“horseback” or a “wagon outfit.” He had assured me that he was not a
“wagon man,” and I indeed had heard before that he was not. There is
always a distinction in the army between wagon men and men who go
without wagons by transporting their supplies on pack animals. The
wagon men have always acquired more reputation as travellers than
Indian fighters. In a trip to the Pine Ridge Agency I had discovered
that General Miles was not committed to any strained theory of how
mounted men should be moved. Any settled purpose he might have about
his movements were all locked up in a desperate desire to “get thar.”
Being a little late in leaving a point on the railroad, I rode along
with Lieutenant Guilfoil, of the Ninth, and we moved at a gentle trot.
Presently we met a citizen in a wagon, and he, upon observing the
lieutenant in uniform, pulled up his team and excitedly inquired,
“What’s the matter, Mr. Soldier?”
Guilfoil said nothing was the matter that he knew of.
“Who be you uns after?”
“No one,” replied the lieutenant.
“Well, I just saw a man go whirling up this ’ere valley with a soldier
tearin’ after him fit to kill” (that was the general’s orderly), “and
then comes a lot more soldiers just a-smokin’, and I sort of wondered
what the man had done.”
We laughed, and remarked that the general must be riding pretty hard.
Other citizens we met inquired if that man was a lunatic or a
criminal. The idea of the soldiers pursuing a man in citizen’s clothes
furthered the idea, but we assured them that it was only General Miles
going somewhere.
All of these episodes opened my eyes to the fact that if I followed
General Miles I would have to do some riding such as I had rarely done
before. In coming back to the railroad we left the Pine Ridge Agency
in the evening without supper, and I was careful to get an even start.
My horse teetered and wanted to gallop, but I knew that the
twenty-eight miles would have to be done at full speed, so I tried to
get him down to a fast trot, which gait I knew would last better; but
in the process of calming him down to a trot I lost sight of the
general and his orderly as they went tearing like mad over a hill
against the last gleam of the sunset. I rode at a very rapid trot over
the hills in the moonlight for over three hours, but I never saw the
general again until I met him at dinner. Then I further concluded that
if I followed the general I would have no time to regait my horses,
but must take them as I found them, gallop or trot. So on this cool
morning at Keough I took observations of the horses which were tied to
the post, with my mind full of misgivings.
[Illustration: GENERAL MILES AND HIS ESCORT]
Patter, patter, patter--clank, clank, clank; up comes the company of
Cheyenne scouts who are to escort the general--fine-looking, tall
young men, with long hair, and mounted on small Indian ponies. They
were dressed and accoutred as United States soldiers, and they fill
the eye of a military man until nothing is lacking. Now the general
steps out of the car and hands the commission into a six-mule
ambulance. I am given a horse, and, mounting, we move off over the
plain and into the hills. The sun comes streaming over the landscape,
and the general is thinking about this old trail, and how years before
he had ploughed his way through the blinding snow to the Lame Deer
fight. I am secretly wishing that it would occupy his mind more fully,
so that my breakfast might settle at the gentle gait we are going, but
shortly he says, “It’s sixty miles, and we must move along.” We break
into a gallop. The landscape is gilded by the morning sun, and the
cool of the October air makes it a perfect thing, but there are
elements in the affair which complicate its perfection. The “bad
lands” are rough, and the general goes down a hill with even more
rapidity than up it. The horses are not the perfect animals of the
bridle-path, but poor old cavalry brutes, procured by the government
under the old contract system, by which the government pays something
like $125 for a $60 horse. This could be remedied by allowing the
officers of each regiment to buy their own horses; but in our army
nothing is remedied, because a lot of nice old gentlemen in Washington
are too conservative to do anything but eat and sleep. There is a bit
of human nature at the bottom of our army organization, and where is
the man who can change that? Men who were the very jewels of the
profession years ago have reached in due time the upper grades of
rank, and occupy the bureaus of the department. These men who have
acquired rank, years, and discretion naturally do nothing, and with
sedate gravity insist that no one else shall do anything. The
ambitious young men have to wait patiently for their retirement, and
in process of waiting they, too, become old and conservative. Old
soldiers are pardonable rubbish, since soldiers, like other men, must
age and decay, the only distinction being that youthful vigor is of
prime importance to a soldier, while in the case of the citizen any
abatement of vigor is rewarded by being shelved. What to do with old
soldiers is a problem which I will hand over to the economists as
being beyond my depth. But to return to the going downhill. General
Miles has acquired his knowledge of riding from wild Indians, and wild
Indians go uphill and downhill as a matter of course at whatever gait
they happen to be travelling. He would make his horse climb a tree
with equal gravity if he was bound that way. The general has known
Indians to ride for two days and a night at a rapid gallop, and it
never occurs to him that he cannot do anything which any one else can;
so he spurs along, and we go cutting around the _coulies_ and bluffs
like frightened antelopes or mad creatures. The escort strings out
behind. This is observed with a grim humor by the general, who desires
nothing so much as to leave his escort far in the rear. He turns in
his saddle, and seeing the dust of the escort far behind, says:
“Shake up the young men a little; do ’em good. They get sleepy;” and
away we go.
It is over thirty miles to the first relay station, or courier’s camp,
and another problem looms up. The general’s weight is over two hundred
pounds, and I confess to two hundred and fifteen avoirdupois, and, as
I have before remarked, my horse was not an Irish hunter, so my musing
took a serious vein. It is all very well for a major-general to ride
down a cavalry horse, but if such an accident were to happen to me,
then my friends in the cavalry would crown me with thorns. Two hundred
and fifteen pounds requires a great deal more careful attention than a
one-hundred-and-forty-pound wasp-waisted cavalryman. What the latter
can do with impunity would put me on foot--a thing that happened some
ten years since in this very State of Montana, and a thing I have
treasured in mind, and will not have repeated. So I brought the old
horse down to a trot, and a good round trot eats up a road in short
order. Your galloper draws away from you, but if the road is long
enough, you find that you are at his heels.
After a good day’s ride of something like sixty miles, we met a troop
of the Eighth Cavalry near its camp on the Tongue River, and the
general is escorted in. The escorts draw into line, salute, and the
general is duly deposited in a big Sibley tent; and I go away on the
arms of some “cavalry kids” (as young lieutenants are called) to a
hole in the ground (a dugout) where they are quartered. On the
following morning I am duly admonished that if my whereabouts could
have been ascertained on the previous evening, the expedition would
have continued to the camp of the First Cavalry. I do not think the
general was unduly severe, desiring simply to shift the
responsibility of the procrastination on to other shoulders, and
meanwhile being content to have things as they were. I was privately
thanked by the citizen members of the commission for the delay I had
caused, since they had a well-grounded conviction that sixty miles a
day in an army ambulance was trouble enough. After some sarcasm by a
jolly young sub, to the effect that “if one wants to call a citizen
out of a tent, one must ring a dinner-bell,” we were again mounted and
on the way. I was badly mounted that day, but able to participate in
the wild charge of forty-five miles to the Lame Deer camp, near the
Cheyenne Agency. The fifty Cheyenne scouts and a troop of the Eighth
were in escort.
By a happy combination I was able to add greatly to my equestrian
knowledge on this ride. It happened in this way; but I must explain.
Some years ago I had occasion to ride a stock saddle (the cowboy
article), and with all the positiveness of immature years, I held all
other trees and all other methods of riding in a magnificent contempt.
Later on I had to be convinced that a great many young cavalry
officers in our service were the most daring and perfect riders, and
that the McClelland saddle was the proper thing. I even elaborated a
theory in explanation of all this, which I had duly shattered for me
when I came East and frequented a New York riding-academy, where a
smiling professor of the art assured me that cowboys and soldiers were
the worst possible riders. Indeed, the sneers of the polite European
were so superlative that I dared not even doubt his statements. Of
course I never quite understood how my old champions of the cattle
range and the war trail could pick things off the ground while in full
career, or ride like mad over the cut banks and bowlders, if they were
such desperately bad riders; and I never was able to completely
understand why my European master could hardly turn in his saddle
without tumbling off. But still he reduced me to submission, and I
ceased even to doubt. I changed my style of riding, in deference to a
public sentiment, and got my legs tucked up under my chin, and learned
to loose my seat at every alternate footfall, and in time acquired a
balance which was as secure as a pumpkin on the side of a barrel. Thus
equipped with all this knowledge and my own saddle, I went out to the
Northwest with the purpose of introducing a little revolution in
cavalry riding. Things went swimmingly for a time. The interpreters
and scouts watched my riding with mingled pity and scorn, but I knew
they were unenlightened, and in no way to be regarded seriously. The
general was duly amused by my teetering, and suggested to the smiling
escort officers that “he has lived so long abroad, you know,” etc.,
all of which I did not mind, for my faith in the eternal art of the
thing was complete. Now to tell how I discovered that I was riding a
seat which was no seat at all, and was only retained by a series of
happy accidents, I will continue. While at the head of the column,
where I could see the deep ruts in the road and the bowlders, and
could dodge the prairie-dog holes, it was simple enough; but my horse
being a very clumsy galloper, and beginning to blow under the pace, I
began to pull up, calculating to get a sharp trot, and overhaul the
column when it slowed down. The column of soldiers dashed by, and the
great cloud of dust rose up behind them which always follows a herd of
animals in the West. Being no longer able to see, the only thing to do
under the circumstances was to give my horse his head, and resign
myself to the chances of a gopher hole, if it was foreordained that my
horse should find one. True to his instincts, my old cavalry horse
plunged into the ranks. You cannot keep a troop horse out of the
ranks. They know their place, and seek it with the exactitude of
water. If the cavalry tactics are ever changed, the present race of
horses will have to be sold, because, while you can teach a horse
anything, you cannot unteach him.
[Illustration: THE SUPPLY TRAIN]
In front I could see two silhouettes of soldiers tearing along, and
behind could hear the heavy pounding of the troop horses, the clank of
arms, the snorts and heavy breathings. I could hardly see my horse’s
head, to say nothing of the ground in front. Here is where the perfect
grip with the thighs is wanted, and here is where the man who is
bundled up like a ball on his horse’s back is in imminent danger of
breaking his neck. I felt like a pack on a government mule, and only
wished I had some one to “throw the diamond hitch over me.” The
inequalities of the road make your horse plunge and go staggering
sidewise, or down on his knees, and it is not at all an unusual thing
for a cavalryman to upset entirely, though nothing short of a total
turn-over will separate a veteran soldier from his horse. After a few
miles of these vicissitudes I gained the head of the column, and when
the pace slackened I turned the whole thing over in my mind, and a
great light seemed to shine through the whole subject. For a smooth
road and a trotting horse, that European riding-master was right; but
when you put a man in the dust or smoke, over the rocks and cut banks,
on the “bucking” horse, or where he must handle his weapons or his
_vieta_, he must have a seat on his mount as tight as a stamp on an
envelope, and not go washing around like a shot in a bottle. In a park
or on a country road, where a man has nothing to do but give his
undivided attention to sticking on his saddle, it has its advantages.
An Indian or a cowboy could take the average park rider off from his
horse, scalp him, hang him on a bush, and never break a gallop. I
do not wish to seem intolerant, because I will say that the most
beautiful horse and the most perfect horseman I have ever seen was the
bay gelding Partisan and his rider in the high-school class at the
recent Horse Show in New York; but I do insist that no one shall for a
moment imagine that the American style of riding is not the firmest of
all seats.
[Illustration: UNITED STATES CAVALRY IN WINTER RIG]
With a repetition of the military forms, we reached the cavalry camp
on the Lame Deer Creek. This is an old battle-ground of the
general’s--his last fight with the Cheyennes, where, as the general
puts it, we “kicked them out of their blankets in the early morning.”
These Indians recognize him as their conqueror, and were allied with
him in the Nez Percé campaign. One old chief pointed to the stars on
his shoulder-strap, and charged him to remember that they helped to
put them there.
That night was very cold, and I slept badly, so at an early hour I
rolled out of my blankets and crawled into my clothes. I stepped out
of my tent, and saw that the stars were yet visible and the light of
the morning warming up to chase the gray shadows over the western
hills. Three tight little cavalry soldiers came out on the parade, and
blew three bugles as hard as ever they could to an unappreciative
audience of sleepy soldiers and solemn hills. I walked down past the
officers’ row, and shook the kinks out of my stiffened knees.
Everything was as quietly dismal as only a sleeping camp can be. The
Sibley containing General Miles showed no signs of life, and until he
arose this little military solar system would not revolve. I bethought
me of the irregulars. They were down in the river bottom--Lieutenant
Casey and his Indian scouts. I knew that Casey had commanded Indian
scouts until his temper was as refined as beaten gold, so I thought it
safer to arouse him than any one else, and, walking down, I scratched
at his tent--which is equivalent to knocking--and received a rather
loud and surly inquiry as to what I wanted. My sensitive nature was so
shocked by this that, like the bad actor, I had hopes for no more
generous gift than a cigarette. I was let into the Sibley, and saw the
ground covered with blanketed forms. One of the swathed forms sat up,
and the captain allowed he wanted to get up in the night, but that
ever since Lieutenant Blank had shot at the orderly he was afraid to
move about in the gloom. Lieutenant B. sat up and denied the
impeachment. Another officer arose and made some extended remarks on
the unseemly disturbance at this unseasonable hour. To pass over these
inequalities of life, I will say that the military process of
stiffening a man’s backbone and reducing his mind to a logarithm
breeds a homogeneous class whom we all know. They have small waists,
and their clothes fit them; they are punctilious; they respect forms,
and always do the dignified and proper thing at the particular
instant, and never display their individuality except on two
occasions: one is the field of battle and the other is before
breakfast. Some bright fellow will one day tell in print the droll
stock anecdotes of the United States army, and you’ll all agree that
they are good. They are better, though, if you sit in a Sibley on a
cold morning while the orderly boils the coffee; and are more
fortunate if you have Ned Casey to embellish what he calls the
international complications which arose from the bombardment of Canada
with paving-stones by a drunken recruit at Detroit.
After the commission had talked to a ring of drowsy old chiefs, and
the general had reminded them that he had thrashed them once, and was
perfectly willing to do it again if they did not keep in the middle of
the big road, the commission was loaded into the ambulances.
[Illustration: UNITED STATES INFANTRY IN WINTER RIG]
The driver clucked and whistled and snapped his whip as a preliminary
which always precedes the concerted movement of six mules, and we
started. This time I found that I had a mount that was “a horse from
the ground up,” as they phrase it in the red-blooded West. Well it was
so, for at the relay camp I had issued to me a sorrel ruin which in
the pristine vigor of its fifth year would not have commanded the
value of a tin cup. After doing a mile of song and dance on this poor
beast I dismounted, and shifting my saddle back to my led horse of the
morning, which was led by a Crow scout, made the sixty-mile march of
that day on the noble animal. Poor old chap, fit for a king, good for
all day and the next, would bring six hundred dollars in the New York
Horse Exchange, but condemned to pack a trooper in the ranks until a
penurious government condemns and sells him to a man who, nine times
out of ten, by the law of God, ought not to be intrusted with the
keeping of the meanest of his creatures, to say nothing of his noblest
work--a horse. “Such is life,” is the salve a good soldier puts on his
wounds.
During the day we went all over the battle-field of the Little Big
Horn. I heard a good deal of professional criticism, and it is my
settled conviction that had Reno and Benteen gone in and fought as
hard as they were commanded to do, Custer would have won his fight,
and to-day be a major-general. The military moral of that affair for
young soldiers is that when in doubt about what to do it is always
safe to go in and fight “till you drop,” remembering that, however a
citizen may regard the proposition, a soldier cannot afford to be
anything else than a “dead lion.”
We were nearing the Crow Agency and Fort Custer, and it is against all
my better impulses, and with trepidation at the impropriety of
unveiling the truth, that I disclose the fact that the general would
halt the column at a convenient distance from a post, and would then
exchange his travel-worn garb for glittering niceties of a
major-general’s uniform. The command then advanced into the fort. The
guns bellowed and the cavalry swung into line, while numerous officers
gathered, in all the perfection of neat-fitting uniforms, to receive
him. At this time the writer eliminated himself from the ceremonial,
and from some point of vantage proceeded to pull up his boots so as to
cover as much as possible the gaping wounds in his riding-trousers,
and tried vainly to make a shooting-jacket fit like an officer’s
blouse, while he dealt his hat sundry thumps in a vain endeaver to
give it a more rakish appearance. He was then introduced and
apologized for in turn. To this day he hopes the mantle of charity was
broad enough to cover his case.
What a contrast between soldiers in field and soldiers in garrison!
Natty and trim--as straight as a sapling, with few words and no
gestures--quite unlike those of two days, or rather nights, ago, when
the cold froze them out of their blankets, and they sat around the
camp-fires pounding tin cans and singing the Indian medicine song with
a good Irish accent. Very funny that affair--the mixture of Cheyenne
and Donnybrook is a strange noise.
The last stage from Custer to the railroad is thirty-five miles and a
half, which we did with two relays, the latter half of it in the
night. There was no escort--only two orderlies and the general--and I
pattered along through the gloom. The clouds hung over the earth in a
dense blanket, and the road was as dim as a Florentine fresco; but
night nor cold nor heat can bring General Miles to a walk, and the
wild charge in the dark was, as an experience, a complete thing. You
cannot see; you whirl through a cañon cut in the mud; you plough
through the sage-brush and over the rocks clatter and bang. The
general is certainly a grim old fellow--one of the kind that make
sparks fly when he strikes an obstacle. I could well believe the old
Fifth Infantryman who said “he’s put many a corn on a dough-boy’s
foot,” and it’s a red-letter day for any one else that keeps at his
horse’s heels. You may ride into a hole, over a precipice, to
perdition, if it’s your luck on this night, but is not the general in
front? You follow the general--that’s the grand idea--that is the
military idea. If the United States army was strung out in line with
its general ahead, and if he should ride out into the broad Atlantic
and swim to sea, the whole United States army would follow along, for
that’s the idea, you know.
But for the headlong plunge of an orderly, we passed through all
right, with due thankfulness on my part, and got to our car at the
siding, much to the gratification of the Chicago colored man in
charge, who found life at Custer Station a horrid blank. Two hundred
and forty-eight miles in thirty-six hours and a half, and sixty miles
of it on one horse, was not bad riding, considering everything. Not
enough to make a man famous or lame, but enough for the time being.