The prairie sod was torn by the hoofs of a hundred ponies. That was
evident. All around a little sink in the surface at a distance of
several hundred yards the warriors must have dashed and circled for full
an hour. Here along the rim of the shallow basin, each behind the
bloated and stiffening carcass of his horse,--each surrounded by
threescore copper shells, showing that he had fought till hope and
ammunition both were gone,--lay the poor remains of the gallant boys who
had ridden silently away in obedience to their orders on the previous
afternoon,--recognizable now only by their teeth or some still ungashed
body mark. How long they had pluckily, cheerily held out, confident of
the speedy coming of the comrades from over that westward spur, and
therefore less miserly of their lead and eager to stretch some of their
yelling foes upon the sward, could now only be conjectured. Little by
little their fierce, defiant fire had slackened. Little by little
confidence had waned, and doubt and dread replaced it. Some, probably,
had been earlier shot by the storm of centring bullets; some, possibly,
had sent their last shot into the reeling brain,--death by one's own
hand being better at least than by slow and fiendish torture; and at
last, probably just at dusk, the triumphant savages were able to close
in upon their helpless prey and reap their reward of scalps and plunder
and wreak their fury on a mute and defenceless foe.
But in a search of full an hour not a sign had Warren's best scouts
discovered of Davies or his companion. The Indian trail, that of a
war-party of at least fifty or sixty braves, led away southward again,
into and through the timber in the distant river bottom, and there it
became scattered, most of the party seeming to have ridden on towards
the reservation in the darkness of the night, while others turned
up-stream, and their pony-tracks led towards the point where Warren's
battalion had bivouacked. These were probably the causes of the flitting
shadows Sanders had detected far out on the prairie,--these the owls and
coyotes whose weird cries had at intervals disturbed the silence of the
night. Solemnly, sadly, now, the burial-parties labored. The soil was
comparatively soft in the neighboring ravine,--much more so than higher
up the slopes where the two crack shots had fallen earlier in the
afternoon,--and here, with picket-pins and a spade or two which happened
to be with the pack-train, a trench was scooped out, into which the poor
remains were lowered and then covered with stones, dragged from the
depths of the neighboring _coulée_. It took some hours to finish the sad
duty, and meanwhile sharp-eyed scouts were busily occupied striving to
determine what had become of Davies and Sergeant McGrath.
In this work the major himself took the lead, and here Devers's
statements had to be drawn upon. Old Indian-fighters pointed out many a
significant sign to sustain the theory that the fight must have lasted
full an hour,--the trampled condition of the turf,--the quantities of
shells lying behind every little hummock or ridge in the surrounding
prairie that commanded the position of the defence or afforded shelter
from its fire. Down in the very ravine in which the bodies were buried,
full four hundred yards from the scene of their desperate stand, the
soft, sandy soil was pawed and trodden by waiting war-ponies, whose
riders, lying flat on their stomachs along the bank above, had kept
their watch upon the besieged, firing whenever head or hand appeared
above their carcass fortification. The whole ingenuity of the Indian
plan became apparent as the situation was studied. Noting after ten
o'clock that morning that the battalion was no longer marching due
south, but had turned, heading southwest straight away for the landmark
of the valley,--that distant, black, pine-crested peak,--the lurking
warriors had devised their scheme to lure a scouting detachment away
from the support of the column. Far down in the river bottom, ten miles
away to the left of the trail, they had built at the springs a "shack"
from the relics of some miner's outfit captured thereabouts earlier in
the summer, and waiting until the head of the column was approaching the
crest of the water-shed to the north, set fire to their pile and then
secreted their main body in a deep ravine to await results, while small
parties were thrown well forward to pick off venturesome individuals, if
only such rode out in reconnoissance. If the white chief "bit" and
detached a small party, then every effort was to be made to keep the
battalion occupied and interested,--to draw it along, if possible,
towards the southwest,--just a few daring spirits devoting themselves to
this duty, while the stronger party, keeping in hiding until they lured
it far beyond rescuing distance, gradually encircled the isolated squad
and at last pounced upon their prey. It is no new device. It was to
prevent just such a play that Warren had ordered Devers with his troop
to keep midway, holding Davies's little party in sight and support and
the main column in communication. Had Devers obeyed the instructions
given him and gone on down along that jutting spur instead of far to the
west of it, the catastrophe would have been averted,--the Indian attack,
even if attempted, could have been beaten off.
In bitterness of spirit the major was riding over the field, too full of
exasperation as yet to trust himself to send for and speak to his
subordinate, even when he felt that he must hold conference with him in
order to determine how best to direct the search. Twice or thrice had
Devers essayed to open communication with his chief and impress him with
his views, but Warren had sent him word by Hastings to supervise at the
designated point--which he himself selected--the burial of the men,
while he, the major, went on with the search. Time and again it was
noted how often Devers would climb the bank and anxiously gaze off to
the west toward that fatal curtain,--the spur that separated him from
the sacrificed detachment the night before. What his thoughts were could
only be conjectured, but little Sanders seemed to hit pretty near the
mark when he confided to Hastings that Differs didn't seem to care a
damn whether Warren followed the Indian trail or not; what he was afraid
of was that the major would "get onto" his own. And indeed as the
morning wore on it began to look as though that were what the major was
bent on doing. The scouting-parties had come back with their report of
what they had found in the river bottom, and by this time Warren with
his escort was three miles over to the west and slowly searching along
the east face of the spur, peeping into every hollow and depression that
might shelter a human form and looking everywhere for the print of
horses' hoofs. At ten o'clock he had sent to Devers for some intelligent
non-commissioned officer who could point out about where they had last
seen Davies as he crossed the ridge returning to his men at sundown, but
Devers very plausibly responded that while it might not be difficult to
do so from where they parted, "just over on the west side," it couldn't
be reliably done from so far to the east. The reply must at least serve
to delay matters awhile, and every moment was of value to Devers.
His own theory was that, as twilight was setting in as Davies recrossed
the ridge, everything beyond in the low grounds was in deep obscurity.
The attack had probably begun about the time the young officer, with
Murray, first crossed the ridge in obedience to the captain's orders to
report to him in person. Less than an hour, Devers thought, elapsed
before he could again have come within sight of the spot where he left
his little command. By that time all was practically over. In the
gathering darkness and in the glut and greed of their savage triumph the
Indians had crowded about the victims. Davies and the sergeant,
returning, had been allowed unmolested to make their way well down
toward the scene. The fire in the bottom was fed to lure them on (it was
still smouldering when Warren's men trotted thither in the morning), and
the two had either been captured alive and run off with the main body to
grace the stake at the scalp-dance to be held with fiendish rejoicing
somewhere beyond danger of interruption, or else, warned in some way,
the two had sought to escape, and had been headed off and killed in some
of the still unexplored ravines or _coulées_ farther to the southwest.
In either case, provided the major did not persist in his investigation
and so discover how very far Devers had led his troop away from sight or
support of Davies's men, and how utterly he had failed to carry out his
orders, the captain felt tolerably confident that all the blame would be
landed where it properly belonged,--on the shoulders of the dead and
defenceless lieutenant, whose reluctance to undertake the duty many had
observed, and whose womanish swoon at sight of the slaughtered men had
not only proved his unfitness for frontier service, but long delayed his
return to his party. Devers had always said Davies was entirely
overrated by the colonel and Truman and others; he had held all summer
that the lieutenant was a "molly-coddle;" he had been reproved more than
once for what they termed his injustice to his subaltern, and now Davies
had proved just exactly what he knew he would prove,--a carpet knight, a
prayer-meeting soldier, with neither grit nor brawn nor backbone; and if
he was killed, at least he had died in time to save the regiment from
having to blush for him in the future. Devers had served throughout the
war of the rebellion in a regiment that saw no end of hard fighting, but
always when he happened to be on sick-leave or detached service of some
kind, for in all of his years of service no man in his grade or corps
had so seldom been under fire, either in the South or on the plains.
With abilities unquestioned and opportunities second to none, it was
nevertheless observed of him at the close of the four years' struggle
that there, at least, was a man who hadn't even mustering or recruiting
service to fall back upon when "brevets" went scattering broadcast over
the army, showering like the rain upon the just and the unjust. He had
lived all through it without having become distinguished for anything
that might become a man, winning a name for himself principally for
consummate skill in getting out of what he was told to do without
getting into a scrape or out of the service. He became a tremendous
paper-fighter in the days that followed, however, and like some of our
war generals, could find the weak points in the armor of his comrades if
he couldn't in that of the enemy. He became a club-room critic of other
fellows' campaigns, companies, or conduct, as probably the most
effective way of diverting attention from his own. He sneered at the war
record of every contemporary who had achieved rank superior to his own,
as with hardly an exception every one of them had done so, and made the
burden of his song among the younger men the blunders, faults, and
follies of the elders. Without a drop of Irish blood in his veins, he
inspired the belief that he must be own cousin to the newly-landed
Hibernian who announced himself as "agin the governmint," for post and
regimental commanders without exception found him the most adroit,
crafty, sinuous, and troublesome of captains,--one who was forever doing
something to try them, yet nothing on which they could try him. Well he
knew his unpopularity and sagely judged his opportunities. The liberties
he had dared with Warren he would not now have ventured with Riggs, or
Black Bill, or old Tintop, one and all of whom had learned to know him
well, and would have been prepared for some such betrayal of the trust
reposed in him.
He had worried Black Bill--long time his post commander--to the verge of
exasperation with his perpetual hair-splitting and quibbling. He had
played his last trump with Tintop early in the campaign, and received
that grizzled veteran's rasping intimation that one more experiment
would lead to arrest and court-martial, and received it with every
appearance of amaze and pain, which might have been effective had not
Hastings been called upon beforehand to give his version of the affair
that led to it. It was one of those constantly recurring examples of
Devers's "cussedness" which led many a stout cavalry officer to set
forth just what he'd do with Devers if he only had him under his
command, yet the very men so confident they could bring him to time were
not infrequently the ones who subsequently found him too adroit for
their straightforward methods. Black Bill told Tintop that Devers was as
bad as the Irishman's flea,--put your thumb on him and he isn't there.
"I'll cinch him," said Tintop in reply, "if he tries any of his damned
nonsense on me." But with every intention of doing his level best,
"Topsy" little knew the infinite resources of the man.
One of Devers's idiosyncrasies was a hatred of doing things as anybody
else did them. This in a service where absolute uniformity was expected
was prolific of no end of chafing. In every garrison where his troop was
stationed he had become notorious. If the other companies turned out in
white gloves at retreat, Devers's would come in gauntlets. When dress
parade, dismounted, was ordered at Fort Birney one mild November
evening, he marched his men out in arctics and fur caps, and claimed
that to be the proper full dress for the season. When Colonel Emerson in
regimental orders lauded the devotion of Sergeant Foley, who swam the
icy Missouri with despatches from Captain Cameron's beleaguered command,
and ordered a handsome collar to be made by the regimental saddler to be
worn thereafter by his gallant gray, now transferred to the band
because of the cuts and scars he had received in that fierce campaign,
Devers similarly decorated Trumpeter Finnegan's bull terrier "Mike," who
swam the Mini Ska in pursuit of his master the night of the wintry dash
on Tall Bull's village, and gravely paraded "Mike" with the troop next
muster day. These and a score of similarly annoying yet hardly
punishable attempts to bring ridicule upon or run counter to the orders
of his commanders, had actually rendered some of his seniors so averse
to having him under them that it often resulted in his being given
independent details, lonely detachment duty, "one-company posts," and
similar isolation which almost any other officer would have shrunk from,
but that Devers really seemed to enjoy, and, from having been so much
his own commanding officer, he was all the less fitted to render prompt
and cheerful obedience to others when they again had to have him. With
any command greater than that of a single troop he had never been
intrusted. There was no end of speculation and chaff around the
camp-fires, therefore, early in the summer, when Devers, most
unwillingly, it was said, was hauled in from some outlying post where he
had nothing to do but hunt, eat, and sleep, and reported for duty on
what turned out to be the toughest of Indian campaigns. What was worse,
he was ordered to report to Tintop, and now, said the boys, there _will_
be fun.
Well, there was. It took a week of persistent "cinching" to get Devers
and his troop to understand that they were no longer an independent
body, but must serve under the orders of a colonel or major. He had at
first been put in Bell's battalion, and every time the colonel pointed
out a fault Devers "thought" that was as Major Bell wanted it, and when
Bell called his attention to some irregularity, Devers had understood
Colonel Winthrop to say that that was the way it should be done. Bell
finally said that he'd be damned if he wouldn't rather have no command
at all than one with Devers in it. The first day Devers's horses were
herded to graze far out on the slopes,--five hundred yards beyond those
of any other troop,--and Tintop said he wished Captain Devers hereafter
not to allow his herd to be driven beyond those of the rest of the
regiment. Next day they were kicking up a dust not fifty yards from
Tintop's tent,--as far inside the cordon as they had been outside
before,--and Devers plausibly explained that he wanted to be sure he
wasn't too far away. The third day, after a long march with Indians on
every hand, Tintop ordered "double guards and side lines when the herds
went out to graze." The horses of the other troops were ridden out by
the men to good grazing-ground some five hundred yards from the bivouac
fires, and there the riders slipped off and the side lines were slipped
on; but Devers's horses were side-lined as soon as unsaddled, and then
the poor brutes, thus hobbled fore and aft, were driven, painfully
lurching, out to graze. Tintop boiled over at the sight of so
unhorsemanlike a proceeding and rode wrathfully at Devers to rebuke him.
"Why, colonel," said Devers, "I wouldn't have done it for the world, but
Mr. Gray was so positive in saying it must be done when they went out, I
couldn't do otherwise. Of course if he'd said when they _got_ out I----"
And though Tintop swore savagely through his teeth that Devers knew
well just what was meant, as did every other troop commander, he
couldn't prove it. Next day, before the side lines were put on, in some
mysterious way Devers's herd was stampeded and ran six miles before they
could be rounded up, and he explained it was all because they weren't
side-lined in the first place, as they were always accustomed to being,
and as the regulations required they should be in the Indian country.
This was another thing to make Tintop blaspheme. Every day for a week
something was amiss, and, having gone to the length of his own tether,
Devers took to saying that it was all Mr. Davies's fault or Sergeant
Somebody's,--"Mr. Davies had just joined and was utterly inexperienced."
Then Tintop gave Devers positive orders not to content himself with
telling people to do thus and so, but to see that the orders were
obeyed, and Devers then took his pipe and his blankets and
ostentatiously spent hours of the afternoon out on the open prairie, a
monument to the severity and exactions of his colonel. And still the
horses, all of them, got far out on the foot-hills, and Tintop ordered
him a day or two later, when on Scalp Creek, not to let his herd get
more than half a mile away from the troop fires, as they had no tents,
and then Devers had his herd-guards build fires and boil coffee far out
on the prairie, and claimed that those were his troop fires, and
therefore his herd was within reasonable distance of them. Then Tintop
swore another oath and ordered Devers not to let his horses graze more
than half or less than quarter of a mile from his own head-quarters
fire, and as there followed a few days of hot weather, Devers sent his
herd to the foot-hills again, claiming that there was no longer a
head-quarters fire to regulate by, which proved to be a fact, as in such
warm weather there was no need of one. Then, one day, Tintop in so many
words ordered the captain hereafter not to do as he thought, but simply
as his colonel said, and this led to the final incident, still more
side-splitting,--one that the boys in the regiment never tired of
telling. Tintop with his battalion was sent on a seven days' scout,
during which he ordered all the troop commanders, until further
instruction, not to permit their herds to graze more than five hundred
yards from camp. Three days later, what was his wrath to find Devers's
herd almost a mile away down the stream, and close by the tents of Major
Roome's battalion of Foot that had been for a week placidly awaiting the
return of the cavalry! Tintop had halted and unsaddled some distance
up-stream. There wasn't a shred of canvas with the regiment while on
this brisk raid, nor was there need of it in such perfect weather, and
Tintop with Gray by his side stood fuming in the midst of surrounding
cook fires, when Devers came placidly up in obedience to the summons of
the orderly, and many an ear was brought to bear and bets were given and
taken that this time Devers would catch it and no rebate. "How is it,
sir," demanded Tintop, "that in defiance of my positive orders you allow
your herd to go so far away?"
"Why, colonel, you distinctly said they mustn't be herded over five
hundred yards from camp. Of course if I'd been allowed to think I
probably wouldn't have done it, but I sent mine down there accordingly.
That's the only _camp_ I see,--this is only a bivouac." And all Tintop
could ejaculate in response was, "Well, may I be damned!"
These and a host of similar stories had come to Warren's ears in the
course of the campaign, and he had laughed at them as had everybody
else, for after all no man could say that actual harm had occurred as a
result of Devers's experiments. So curiously are we constituted that
when it is only the commander who is braved or his adjutant who is
ruffled, the bulk of the line can bear it with equanimity. Therefore,
while Tintop, Black Bill, Riggs, and his seniors generally could never
refer to Devers except with sympathetic swear words, there were not a
few of the officers junior in rank to his who found no little fun in all
these incidents. Like most stories in or out of the army, they were
perhaps exaggerative, but, like smoke, they could not exist without
smouldering fire. If there were any speculation about Devers in the
regiment, it was as to how he would behave if he ever did get into a
fight, or what would happen in the event of his some day squirming out
of an order on which vital issues depended. "You'll go too far yet,
Devers," said a soldier who strove conscientiously to be his friend and
counsellor, "and when you do, where will be the commander under whom you
have ever served to say a good word for you?"
And now on this fatal September morning that ominous warning was ringing
in his ears again and again. Down in the bottom of his brooding heart he
knew, and well knew, that had he obeyed, as he should have obeyed,
Warren's orders, this catastrophe could not have occurred, and that he
more than any other man on earth was responsible for the death of these
gallant fellows, who, whether they looked up to him or not, were by the
stern discipline of the service dependent on him for the expected
support. If he could realize this, how much the quicker would others be
to attach the blame to him! how much the more necessary must it be to
lose no time in diverting suspicion elsewhere! The fatal propensity to
distort or disobey, which perhaps he could have downed had Tintop or
Riggs been there, he could not resist with Warren,--an envied
contemporary, presumably new to his idiosyncrasies. Nor would he, of
course, even with him, have disobeyed could he have foreseen the fatal
consequences. That would have been risking too much. But now that he had
disobeyed, and in all probability would be held accountable for the
catastrophe, his one road to safety and to acquittal lay in saddling all
possible responsibility on some one else,--preferably Davies. This, if
Davies were silent in death, would not be difficult. Whatsoever others
might think or say, they could prove nothing. If, however, Davies turned
up alive and alert, then matters might be grave indeed. No wonder he
climbed again and again the westward bank and levelled his glasses at
the dull-hued ridge against the brilliant westward sky, frequently
giving vent to loud denunciation of the leaders in the mismanaged
campaign. It was nearly ten o'clock before his dead were laid
away,--before anything occurred that looked like discovery of the
missing pair. Then came new excitement.
Far down toward the point where the distant spur seemed to sink to the
general level of the prairie one or two of Warren's scouts could be seen
rapidly spurring, as though in answer to signals. Presently they, too,
began waving their hats to those searching higher up the ridge. Then all
disappeared over on the westward side. Something evidently had been
found, and Devers's men, their work completed, were grouped eagerly up
the bank. Over half an hour in mingled hope and suspense they waited,
and then there rode in a mounted messenger.
"The major's compliments to Captain Devers," he said, "and he'll wait
for the captain and his troop over yonder. I'm to show the way."
"Have they found anything?" asked Devers.
"Yes, sir,--Mr. Davies; but he's more dead than alive. There is no sign
of McGrath."
"Do you mean Mr. Davies is wounded?"
"No, sir. He seems just dazed-like."
"That's what I said all along," spoke the captain, loudly, so that it
was heard by all the soldiers near at hand. "He never tried to rejoin
his detachment. He never had any nerve. He probably saw what was going
on and hid himself, never daring even to let us know. Damn these
psalm-singing, Sunday-go-to-meeting soldiers anyhow! Here, Howard," he
continued, turning to a young trooper who stood silently at his horse's
head, "you come with me. Lead on, corporal. Sergeant Haney, mount the
troop and follow." And with that the captain rode away.
For a moment, as the men were bringing up their horses and leading them
into line, there was silence. Looking after the three horsemen now well
out on the prairie to the west, the party saw that the messenger was
riding some distance in advance, and that Howard, a recruit who joined
with the detachment early in the campaign, was now side by side and
evidently in conversation with the captain. It had been a summer of
campaigning in which not only the nicer distinctions as between officer
and man--not only all symbols of rank and uniform--had gradually
disappeared, but with them, little by little, some of the first
principles of good order and military discipline. Officers had been
heard openly condemning or covertly sneering at the seniors in command.
It was not strange that the rank and file should fall into similar ways.
"Never had any nerve, is it?" muttered Private Dooley, after a moment.
"Boy and man I've soldiered in this regiment longer than you, Captain
Differs, and I know an officer and a gentleman when I see wan, and it's
the public opinion av more than wan private that there's more av both in
that young feller's starvin' stummick than in your whole damn overfed,
bow-legged carcass. How's that, Brannan?" said he, turning to his next
neighbor, a wan, sad-faced recruit.
"Shut up there, Dooley!" ordered Sergeant Haney, briefly. "No more of
that! Count fours."