IN THE VALLEY OF THE ARICKAREE
A blush as of roses
Where rose never grew!
Great drops on the bunch grass.
But not of the dew!
A taint in the sweet air
For wild bees to shun!
A stain that shall never
Bleach out in the sun!
--WHITTIER.
Stillwell was right. Sharp Grover knew, as well as the boy knew, that we
were trapped, that before us now were the awful chances of unequal
Plains warfare. A mere handful of us had been hurrying after a host,
whose numbers the broad beaten road told us was legion. There was no
mirth in that little camp that night in mid-September, and I thought of
other things besides my strange vision at the gorge. The camp was the
only mark of human habitation in all that wide and utterly desolate
land. For days we had noted even the absence of all game--strong
evidence that a host had driven it away before us. Everywhere, save
about that winking camp fire was silence. The sunset was gorgeous, in
the barbaric sublimity of its seas of gold and crimson atmosphere. And
then came the rich coloring of that purple twilight. It is no wonder
they call it regal. Out on the Plains that night it swathed the
landscape with a rarer hue than I have ever seen anywhere else, although
I have watched the sun go down into the Atlantic off the Rockport coast,
and have seen it lost over the edge of the West Prairie beyond the big
cottonwood above the farther draw. As I watched the evening shadows
deepen, I remembered what Morton had told me in the little cabin back in
the Saline country, "Who ever fights the Indians must make his will
before the battle begins." Now that I was face to face with the real
issue, life became very sweet to me. How grand over war and hate were
the thoughts of peace and love! And yet every foot of this beautiful
land must be bought with a price. No matter where the great blame lies,
nor who sinned first in getting formal possession, the real occupation
is won only by sacrifice. And I was confronted with my part of the
offering. Strange thoughts come in such an hour. Sitting there in the
twilight, I asked myself why I should want to live; and I realized how
strong, after all, was the tie that bound me to Springvale; how under
all my pretence of beginning a new life I had not really faced the
future separated from the girl I loved. And then I remembered that it
would mean nothing serious to her how this campaign ended. Oh! I was in
the crucible now. I must prove myself the thing I always meant to be.
God knew the heroic spirit I needed that lonely September night. As I
sat looking out toward the west the years of my boyhood came back to me,
and then I remembered O'mie's words when he told me of his struggle:
"It was to save a woman, Phil. He could only kill me. He wouldn't have
been that good to her. You'd have done the same to save any woman, aven
a stranger to you. Wait an' see."
I thought of the two women in the Solomon Valley, whom Black Kettle's
band had dragged from their homes, tortured inhumanly, and at last
staked out hand and foot on the prairie to die in agony under pitiless
skies.
"When the day av choosin' comes," O'mie said, "we can't do no more 'n to
take our places. We all do it. When you git face to face with a thing
like that, somehow the everlastin' arms Dr. Hemingway preaches about is
strong underneath you."
Oh, blessed O'mie! Had he told me that to give me courage in my hour of
shrinking? Wherever he was to-night I knew his heart was with me, who so
little deserved the love he gave me. At last I rolled myself snugly in
my blanket, for the September evenings are cold in Colorado. The simple
prayers of childhood came back to me, and I repeated the "Now I lay me"
I used to say every night at Aunt Candace's knee. It had a wonderful
meaning to me to-night. And once more I thought of O'mie and how his
thin hand gripped mine when he said: "Most av all, don't niver forgit
it, Phil, when the thing comes to you, aven in your strength. Most av
all, above all sufferin', and natural longin' to live, there comes the
reality av them words Aunt Candace taught us: 'Though I walk through the
valley av the shadow av death, I will fear no evil.'"
"It may be that's the Arickaree Valley for me," I said to myself. "If it
is, I will fear no evil." And I stretched out on the brown grasses and
fell asleep.
About midnight I wakened suddenly. A light was gleaming near. Some one
stood beside me, and presently I saw Colonel Forsyth looking down into
my face with kindly eyes. I raised myself on my elbow and watched him
passing among the slumbering soldiers. Even now I can see Jack
Stillwell's fair girl-face with the dim light on it as he slept beside
me. What a picture that face would make if my pen were an artist's
brush! At three in the morning I wakened again. It was very dark, but I
knew some one was near me, and I judged instinctively it was Forsyth. It
was sixty hours before I slept again.
For five days every movement of ours had been watched by Indian scouts.
Night and day they had hung on our borders, just out of sight, waiting
their time to strike. Had we made a full march on that sixteenth day of
September, instead of halting to rest and graze our horses, we should
have gone, as Stillwell predicted, straight into Hell's jaws. As it was,
Hell rose up and crept stealthily toward us. For while our little band
slept, and while our commander passed restlessly among us on that night,
the redskins moved upon our borders.
Morning was gray in the east and the little valley was full of shadows,
when suddenly the sentinel's cry of "Indians! Indians!" aroused the
sleeping force. The shouts of our guards, the clatter of ponies' hoofs,
the rattling of dry skins, the swinging of blankets, the fierce yells of
the invading foe made a scene of tragic confusion, as a horde of
redskins swept down upon us like a whirlwind. In this mad attempt to
stampede our stock nothing but discipline saved us. A few of the mules
and horses not properly picketed, broke loose and galloped off before
the attacking force, the remaining animals held as the Indians fled away
before the sharp fire of our soldiers.
"Well, we licked them, anyhow," I said to myself exultantly as we obeyed
the instant orders to get into the saddle.
The first crimson line of morning was streaking the east and I lifted my
face triumphantly to the new day. Sharp Grover stood just before me; his
hand was on Forsyth's shoulder.
Suddenly he uttered a low exclamation. "Oh, heavens! General, look at
the Indians."
This was no vision of brown rock and sun-blinded eyes. From every
direction, over the bluff, out from the tall grass, across the slope on
the south, came Indians, hundreds on hundreds. They seemed to spring
from the sod like Roderick Dhu's Highland Scots, and people every curve
and hollow. Swift as the wind, savage as hate, cruel as hell, they bore
down upon us from every way the wind blows. The thrill of that moment is
in my blood as I write this. It was then I first understood the tie
between the commanding officer and his men. It is easy to laud the file
of privates on dress parade, but the man who directs the file in the
hour of battle is the real power. In that instant of peril I turned to
Forsyth with that trust that the little child gives to its father. How
cool he was, and yet how lightning-swift in thought and action.
In all the valley there was no refuge where we might hide, nor height on
which we might defend ourselves. The Indians had counted on our making a
dash to the eastward, and had left that way open for us. They had not
reckoned well on Colonel Forsyth. He knew intuitively that the gorge at
the lower end of the valley was even then filled with a hidden foe, and
not a man of us would ever have passed through it alive. To advance
meant death, and there was no retreat possible. Out in the middle of the
Arickaree, hardly three feet above the river-bed, lay a little island.
In the years to be when the history of the West shall be fully told, it
may become one of the Nation's shrines. But now in this dim morning
light it showed only an insignificant elevation. Its sandy surface was
grown over with tall sage grasses and weeds.
A few wild plums and alder bushes, a clump of low willow shrubs, and a
small cottonwood tree completed its vegetation.
"How about that island, Grover?" I heard Forsyth ask.
"It's all we can do," the scout answered; and the command: "Reach the
island! hitch the horses!" rang through the camp.
It takes long to tell it, this dash for the island. The execution of the
order was like the passing of a hurricane. Horses, mules, men, all
dashed toward the place, but in the rush the hospital supplies and
rations were lost. The Indians had not counted on the island, and they
raged in fury at their oversight. There were a thousand savage warriors
attacking half a hundred soldiers, and they had gloated over the fifty
scalps to be taken in the little gorge to the east. The break in their
plans confused them but momentarily, however.
On the island we tied our horses in the bushes and quickly formed a
circle. The soil was all soft sand. We cut the thin sod with our butcher
knives and began throwing up a low defence, working like fiends with our
hands and elbows and toes, scooping out the sand with our tin plates,
making the commencement of shallow pits. We were stationed in couples,
and I was beside Morton when the onslaught came. Up from the undulating
south, and down over the north bluff swept the furious horde. On they
came with terrific speed, their blood-curdling yells of hate mingling
with the wild songs, and cries and taunts of hundreds of squaws and
children that crowded the heights out of range of danger, watching the
charge and urging their braves to battle. Over the slopes to the very
banks of the creek, into the sandy bed of the stream, and up to the
island they hurled their forces, while bullets crashed murderously, and
arrows whizzed with deadly swiftness into our little sand-built defence.
In the midst of the charge, twice above the din, I caught the clear
notes of an artillery bugle. It was dim daylight now. Rifle-smoke and
clouds of dust and gray mist shot through with flashes of powder, and
the awful rage, as if all the demons of Hell were crying vengeance, are
all in that picture burned into my memory with a white-hot brand. And
above all these there come back to me the faces of that little band of
resolute men biding the moment when the command to charge should be
given. Such determination and such splendid heroism, not twice in a
lifetime is it vouchsafed to many to behold.
We held our fire until the enemy was almost upon us. At the right
instant our rifles poured out a perfect billow of death. Painted bodies
reeled and fell; horses sank down, or rushed mad with pain, upon their
fallen riders; shrieks of agony mingled with the unearthly yells; while
above all this, the steady roar of our guns--not a wasted bullet in all
the line--carried death waves out from the island thicket. To me that
first defence of ours was more tragic than anything in the days and
nights that followed it. The first hour's struggle seasoned me for the
siege.
The fury of the Indian warriors and of the watching squaws is
indescribable. The foe deflected to left and right, vainly seeking to
carry their dead from the field with them. The effort cost many Indian
lives. The long grass on either side of the stream was full of
sharpshooters. The morning was bright now, and we durst not lift our
heads above our low entrenchment. Our position was in the centre of a
space open to attack from every arc of the circle. Caution counted more
than courage here. Whoever stood upright was offering his life to his
enemy. Our horses suffered first. By the end of an hour every one of
them was dead. My own mount, a fine sorrel cavalry horse, given to me at
Fort Hays, was the last sacrifice. He was standing near me in the brown
bushes. I could see his superb head and chest as, with nostrils wide,
and flashing eyes, he saw and felt the battle charge. Subconsciously I
felt that so long as he was unhurt I had a sure way of escape.
Subconsciously, too, I blessed the day that Bud Anderson taught O'mie
and me to drop on the side of Tell Mapleson's pony and ride like a
Plains Indian. But even as I looked up over my little sand ridge a
bullet crashed into his broad chest. He plunged forward toward us,
breaking his tether. He staggered to his knees, rose again with a lunge,
and turning half way round reared his fore feet in agony and seemed
about to fall into our pit. At that instant I heard a laugh just beyond
the bushes, and a voice, not Indian, but English, cried exultingly,
"There goes the last damned horse, anyhow."
It was the same voice that I had heard up on "Rockport" one evening,
promising Marjie in pleading tones to be a "good Indian." The same hard,
cold voice I had heard in the same place saying to me, as a promise
before high heaven: "I will go. But I shall see you there. When we meet
again my hand will be on your throat and--I don't care whose son you
are."
Well, we were about to meet. The wounded animal was just above our pit.
Morton rose up with lifted carbine to drive him back when from the same
gun that had done for my horse came a bullet full into the man's face.
It ploughed through his left eye and lodged in the bones beyond it. He
uttered no cry, but dropped into the pit beside me, his blood, streaming
from the wound, splashed hot on my forehead as he fell. I was stunned by
his disaster, but he never faltered. Taking his handkerchief from his
pocket, he bound it tightly about his head and set his rifle ready for
the next charge. After that, nothing counted with me. I no longer shrank
in dread of what might happen. All fear of life, or death, of pain, or
Indians, or fiends from Hades fell away from me, and never again did my
hand tremble, nor my heart-beat quicken in the presence of peril. By the
warm blood of the brave man beside me I was baptized a soldier.
The force drew back from this first attempt to take the island, but the
fire of the hidden enemy did not cease. In this brief breathing spell we
dug deeper into our pits, making our defences stronger where we lay.
Disaster was heavy upon us. The sun beat down pitilessly on the hot, dry
earth where we burrowed. Out in the open the Indians were crawling like
serpents through the tall grasses toward our poor house of sand, hoping
to fall upon us unseen. They had every advantage, for we did not dare to
let our bodies be exposed above the low breastworks, and we could not
see their advance. Nearly one-half of our own men were dead or wounded.
Each man counted for so much on that battle-girt island that day. Our
surgeon had been struck in the first round and through all the rest of
his living hours he was in a delirium. Forsyth himself, grievously
wounded in both lower limbs, could only drag his body about by his arms.
A rifle ball had grazed his scalp and fractured his skull. The pain from
this wound was almost unbearable. But he did not loosen his grip on the
military power delegated to him. From a hastily scooped-out pit where we
laid him he directed the whole battle.
And now we girded on our armor for the supreme ordeal. The unbounded
wrath of the Indians at their unlooked-for failure in their first attack
told us what to expect. Our own guns were ready for instant use. The
arms of our dead and wounded comrades were placed beside our own. No
time was there in those awful hours to listen to the groans of the
stricken ones nor to close the dying eyes. Not a soul of us in those
sand-pits had any thought that we should ever see another sunset. All we
could do was to put the highest price upon our lives. It was ten o'clock
in the forenoon. The firing about the island had almost ceased, and the
silence was more ominous than the noise of bullets. Over on the bluff
the powers were gathering. The sunlight glinted on their arms and
lighted up their fantastic equipments of war. They formed in battle
array. And then there came a sight the Plains will never see again, a
sight that history records not once in a century. There were hundreds of
these warriors, the flower of the fierce Cheyenne tribe, drawn up in
military order, mounted on great horses, riding bareback, their rifles
held aloft in their right hands, the left hand grasping the flowing
mane, their naked bodies hideously adorned with paint, their long
scalp-locks braided and trimmed with plumes and quills. They were the
very acme of grandeur in a warfare as splendid as it was barbaric. And
I, who live to write these lines, account myself most fortunate that I
saw it all.
They were arrayed in battle lines riding sixty abreast. It was a man of
genius who formed that military movement that day. On they came in
orderly ranks but with terrific speed, straight down the slope, across
the level, and on to the island, as if by their huge weight and terrible
momentum they would trample it into the very level dust of the earth,
that the winds of heaven might scatter it broadcast on the Arickaree
waters. Till the day of my death I shall hear the hoof-beats of that
cavalry charge.
Down through the centuries the great commanders have left us their
stories of prowess, and we have kept their portraits to adorn our
stately halls of fame; and in our historic shrines we have preserved
their records--Cyrus, Alexander, Leonidas at Thermopylae, Hannibal
crossing the Alps, Charles Martel at Tours, the white-plumed Henry of
Navarre leading his soldiers in the battle of Ivry, Cromwell with his
Ironsides--godly men who chanted hymns while they fought--Napoleon's
grand finale at Waterloo, with his three thousand steeds mingling the
sound of hoof-beats with the clang of cuirasses and the clash of sabres;
Pickett's grand sweep at Gettysburg, and Hooker's charge up Lookout
Mountain.
But who shall paint the picture of that terrific struggle on that
September day, or write the tale of that swirl of Indian warriors, a
thousand strong, as they swept down in their barbaric fury upon the
handful of Anglo-Saxon soldiers crouching there in the sand-pits
awaiting their onslaught? It was the old, old story retold that day on
the Colorado plains by the sunlit waters of the Arickaree--the white
man's civilization against the untamed life of the wilderness. And for
that struggle there is only one outcome.
Before the advancing foe, in front of the very centre of the foremost
line, was their leader, Roman Nose, chief warrior of the Cheyennes. He
was riding a great, clean-limbed horse, his left hand grasping its mane.
His right hand was raised aloft, directing his forces. If ever the
moulds of Nature turned out physical perfection, she realized her ideal
in that superb Cheyenne. He stood six feet and three inches in his
moccasins. He was built like a giant, with a muscular symmetry that was
artistically beautiful. About his naked body was a broad, blood-red
silken sash, the ends of which floated in the wind. His war bonnet, with
its two short, curved, black buffalo horns, above his brow, was a
magnificent thing crowning his head and falling behind him in a sweep of
heron plumes and eagle feathers. The Plains never saw a grander warrior,
nor did savage tribe ever claim a more daring and able commander. He was
by inherent right a ruler. In him was the culmination of the intelligent
prowess and courage and physical supremacy of the free life of the
broad, unfettered West.
On they rushed that mount of eager warriors. The hills behind them
swarmed with squaws and children. Their shrieks of grief and anger and
encouragement filled the air. They were beholding the action that down
to the last of the tribe would be recounted a victory to be chanted in
all future years over the graves of their dead, and sung in heroic
strain when their braves went forth to conquest. And so, with all the
power of heart and voice, they cried out from the low hill-tops. Just at
the brink of the stream the leader, Roman Nose, turned his face a moment
toward the watching women. Lifting high his right hand he waved them a
proud salute. The gesture was so regal, and the man himself so like a
king of men, that I involuntarily held my breath. But the set
blood-stained face of the wounded man beside me told what that kingship
meant.
As he faced the island again, Roman Nose rose up to his full height and
shook his clenched fist toward our entrenchment. Then suddenly lifting
his eyes toward the blue sky above him, he uttered a war-cry, unlike any
other cry I have ever heard. It was so strong, so vehement, so full of
pleading, and yet so dominant in its certainty, as if he were invoking
the gods of all the tribes for their aid, yet sure in his defiant soul
that victory was his by right of might. The unearthly, blood-chilling
cry was caught up by all his command and reechoed by the watchers on
the hills till, away and away over the undulating plains it rolled,
dying out in weird cadences in the far-off spaces of the haze-wreathed
horizon.
Then came the dash for our island entrenchment. As the Indians entered
the stream I caught the sound of a bugle note, the same I had heard
twice before. On the edge of the island through a rift in the
dust-cloud, I saw in the front line on the end nearest me a horse a
little smaller than the others, making its rider a trifle lower than his
comrades. And then I caught one glimpse of the rider's face. It was the
man whose bullet had wounded Morton--Jean Pahusca.
We held back our fire again, as in the first attack, until the foe was
almost upon us. With Forsyth's order, "Now! now!" our part of the drama
began. I marvel yet at the power of that return charge. Steady,
constant, true to the last shot, we swept back each advancing wave of
warriors, maddened now to maniac fury. In the very moment of victory,
defeat was breaking the forces, mowing down the strongest, and spreading
confusion everywhere. A thousand wild beasts on the hills, frenzied with
torture, could not have raged more than those frantic Indian women and
shrieking children watching the fray.
With us it was the last stand. We wasted no strength in this grim
crisis; each turn of the hand counted. While fearless as though he bore
a charmed life, the gallant savage commander dared death at our hands,
heeding no more our rain of rifle balls than if they had been the drops
of a summer shower. Right on he pressed regardless of his fallen braves.
How grandly he towered above them in his great strength and superb
physique, a very prince of prowess, the type of leader in a land where
the battle is always to the strong. And no shot of our men was able to
reach him until our finish seemed certain, and the time-limit closing
in. But down in the thick weeds, under a flimsy rampart of soft sand,
crouched a slender fair-haired boy. Trim and pink-cheeked as a girl,
young Stillwell was matching his cool nerve and steady marksmanship
against the exultant dominance of a savage giant. It was David and
Goliath played out in the Plains warfare of the Western continent. At
the crucial moment the scout's bullet went home with unerring aim, and
the one man whose power counted as a thousand warriors among his own
people received his mortal wound. Backward he reeled, and dead, or
dying, he was taken from the field. Like one of the anointed he was
mourned by his people, for he had never known fear, and on his banners
victory had constantly perched.
In the confusion over the loss of their leader the Indians again divided
about the island and fell back out of range of our fire. As the tide of
battle ebbed out, Colonel Forsyth, helpless in his sand pit, watching
the attack, called to his guide.
"Can they do better than that, Grover?"
"I've been on the Plains since I was a boy and I never saw such a charge
as that. I think they have done their level best," the scout replied.
"All right, then, we are good for them." How cheery the Colonel's voice
was! It thrilled my spirits with its courage. And we needed courage, for
just then, Lieutenant Beecher was stretching himself wearily before his
superior officer, saying briefly:
"I have my death-wound; good-night." And like a brave man who had done
his best he pillowed his head face downward on his arms, and spoke not
any more on earth forever.
It has all been told in history how that day went by. When evening fell
upon that eternity-long time, our outlook was full of gloom. Hardly
one-half of our company was able to bear arms. Our horses had all been
killed, our supplies and hospital appliances were lost. Our wounds were
undressed; our surgeon was slowly dying; our commander was helpless, and
his lieutenant dead. We had been all day without food or water. We were
prisoners on this island, and every man of us had half a hundred
jailers, each one a fiend in the high art of human torture.
I learned here how brave and resourceful men can be in the face of
disaster. One of our number had already begun to dig a shallow well. It
was a muddy drink, but, God be praised, it was water! Our supper was a
steak cut from a slaughtered horse, but we did not complain. We gathered
round our wounded commander and did what we could for each other, and no
man thought of himself first. Our dead were laid in shallow graves,
without a prayer. There was no time here for the ceremonies of peace;
and some of the men, before they went out into the Unknown that night,
sent their last messages to their friends, if we should ever be able to
reach home again.
At nightfall came a gentle shower. We held out our hands to it, and
bathed our fevered faces. It was very dark and we must make the most of
every hour. The Indians do not fight by night, but the morrow might
bring its tale of battles. So we digged, and shaped our stronghold, and
told over our resources, and planned our defences, and all the time
hunger and suffering and sorrow and peril stalked about with us. All
night the Indians gathered up their dead, and all night they chanted
their weird, blood-chilling death-songs, while the lamentations of the
squaws through that dreadful night filled all the long hours with
hideous mourning unlike any other earthly discord. But the darkness
folded us in, and the blessed rain fell softly on all alike, on skilful
guide, and busy soldier, on the wounded lying helpless in their beds of
sand, on the newly made graves of those for whom life's fitful fever was
ended. And above all, the loving Father, whose arm is never shortened
that He cannot save, gave His angels charge over us to keep us in all
our ways.