On the fourth day of our pursuit I rode about ten miles ahead of the command till I came to a hill which gave a fine view of the surrounding country. Mounting this, I searched the hills with my field-glasses. Soon I saw a great column of smoke rising about ten miles down the creek. As this cloud drifted aside in the keen wind, I could see a column of men marching beneath it. These I at first believed to be the Indians we were after, but closer study revealed them as General Terry's soldiers.
I forthwith dispatched a scout who was with me to take this news to Crook. But he had no more than gone when I discovered a band of Indians on the opposite side of the creek and another party of them directly in front of me. For a few minutes I fancied that I had made a mistake, and that the men I had seen under the dust were really Indians after all.
But very shortly I saw a body of soldiers forming a skirmish line. Then I knew that Terry's men were there, and that the Indians I had seen were Terry's scouts. These Indians had mistaken me for an Indian, and, believing that I was the leader of a big party, shouted excitedly: "The Sioux are coming." That is why the general threw out the skirmish line I had observed.
General Terry, on coming into the Post, ordered the Seventh Cavalry to form a line of battle across the Rosebud; he also brought up his artillery and had the guns unlimbered for action, doubtless dreading another Custer massacre.
These maneuvers I witnessed from my hill with considerable amusement, thinking the command must be badly frightened. After I had enjoyed the situation to my heart's content I galloped toward the skirmish line, waving my hat. When I was within a hundred yards of the troops, Colonel Wier of the Seventh Cavalry rode out to meet me. He recognized me at once, and convoyed me inside the line, shouting to the soldiers:
"Boys, here's Buffalo Bill!" Thereupon three rousing cheers ran all the way down the line.
Colonel Wier presented me to General Terry. The latter questioned me closely and was glad to learn that the alarm had been a false one. I found that I was not entitled alone to the credit of having frightened the whole Seventh Cavalry. The Indian scouts had also seen far behind me the dust raised by Crook's troops, and were fully satisfied that a very large force of Sioux was in the vicinity and moving to the attack.
At General Terry's request I accompanied him as he rode forward to meet Crook. That night both commands went into camp on the Rosebud. General Terry had his wagon-train with him, so the camp had everything to make life as comfortable as it can be on an Indian trail.
The officers had large wall-tents, with portable beds to stow inside them, and there were large hospital tents to be used as dining-rooms. Terry's camp looked very comfortable and homelike. It presented a sharp contrast to the camp of Crook, who had for his headquarters only one small fly-tent, and whose cooking utensils consisted of a quart cup in which he brewed his own coffee, and a sharp stick on which he broiled his bacon. When I compared these two camps I concluded that Crook was a real Indian fighter. He had plainly learned that to follow Indians a soldier must not be hampered by any great weight of luggage or equipment.
That evening General Terry ordered General Miles, with the Fifth Infantry, to return by a forced march to the Yellowstone, and to proceed by steamboat down that stream to the mouth of the Powder River, where the Indians could be intercepted in case they made an attempt to cross the stream. The regiment made a forced march that night of thirty-five miles, which was splendid traveling for an infantry regiment through a mountainous country.
Generals Crook and Terry spent the evening and the next day in council. The following morning both commands moved out on the Indian trail. Although Terry was the senior officer, he did not assume command of both expeditions. Crook was left in command of his own troops, though the two forces operated together. We crossed the Tongue River and moved on to the Powder, proceeding down that stream to a point twenty miles from its junction with the Yellowstone. There the Indian trail turned to the southeast, in the direction of the Black Hills.
The two commands were now nearly out of supplies. The trail was abandoned, and the troops kept on down the Powder River to its confluence with the Yellowstone. There we remained for several days.
General Nelson A. Miles, who was at the head of the Fifth Infantry, and who had been scouting in the vicinity, reported that no Indians had as yet crossed the Yellowstone. Several steamboats soon arrived with large quantities of supplies, and the soldiers, who had been a little too close to famine to please them, were once more provided with full stomachs on which they could fight comfortably, should the need for fighting arise.
One evening while we were in camp on the Yellowstone at the mouth of the Powder River I was informed that Louis Richard, a half-breed scout, and myself, had been selected to accompany General Miles on a reconnaisance. We were to take the steamerFar Westdown the Yellowstone as far as Glendive Creek. We were to ride in the pilot-house and keep a sharp look-out for Indians on both banks of the river. The idea of scouting from a steamboat was to me an altogether novel one, and I was immensely pleased at the prospect.
At daylight the next morning we reported on the steamer to General Miles, who had with him four or five companies of his regiment. We were somewhat surprised when he asked us why we had not brought our horses. We were at a loss to see how we could employ horses in the pilothouse of a river steamboat. He said that we might need them before we got back, so we sent for them and had them brought on board.
In a few minutes we were looking down the river, the swift current enabling the little steamer to make a speed of twenty miles an hour.
The commander of theFar Westwas Captain Grant March, a fine chap of whom I had often heard. For many years he was one of the most famous swift-water river captains in the country. It was on his steamer that the wounded from the battle of the Little Big Horn had been transported to Fort Abraham Lincoln, on the Missouri River. On that trip he made the fastest steamboat time on record. He was an excellent pilot, and handled his boat in those swift and dangerous waters with remarkable dexterity.
With Richard and me at our station in the pilothouse the little steamer went flying down-stream past islands, around bends, and over sandbars at a rate that was exhilarating, but sometimes a little disquieting to men who had done most of their navigating on the deck of a Western pony. Presently, far away inland, I thought I could see horses grazing, and reported this belief to General Miles. The general pointed out a large tree on the bank, and asked the captain if he could land the boat there.
"I can not only land her there; I can make her climb the tree if you think it would be any use," returned March.
He brought the boat skillfully alongside the tree, and let it go at that, as the general could see no particular advantage in sending the steamboat up the tree.
Richard and I were ordered to take our horses and push out as rapidly as possible to see if there were any Indians in the vicinity. Meanwhile, General Miles kept his soldiers in readiness to march instantly if we reported any work for them to do.
As we rode off, Captain March, sang out:
"Boys, if there was only a heavy dew on the grass, I could send the old craft right along after you."
It was a false alarm, however. The objects I had seen proved to be Indian graves, with only good Indians in them. On arriving at Glendive Creek we found that Colonel Rice and his company of the Fifth Infantry which had been sent on ahead by General Miles had built a good little fort with their trowel bayonets. Colonel Rice was the inventor of this weapon, and it proved very useful in Indian warfare. It is just as deadly in a charge as the regular bayonet, and can also be used almost as effectively as a shovel for digging rifle-pits and throwing up intrenchments.
TheFar Westwas to remain at Glendive overnight. General Miles wanted a scout to go at once with messages for General Terry, and I was selected for the job. That night I rode seventy-five miles through the Bad Lands of the Yellowstone. I reached General Terry's camp the next morning, after having nearly broken my neck a dozen times or more.
Anyone who has seen that country in the daytime knows that it is not exactly the kind of a place one would pick out for pleasure riding. Imagine riding at night, over such a country, filled with almost every imaginable obstacle to travel, and without any real roads, and you can understand the sort of a ride I had that night. I was mighty glad to see the dawn break, and to be able to pick my way a little more securely, although I could not increase the pace at which I had driven my horse through the long, dark night.
There was no present prospect of carrying this out, however. After I had taken lunch, General Terry asked me if I would carry some dispatches to General Whistler, and I replied that I would be glad to do so. Captain Smith, Terry's aide-de-camp, offered me his horse, and I was glad to accept the animal, as my own was pretty well spent. He proved to be a fine mount. I rode him forty miles that night in four hours, reaching General Whistler's steamboat at four in the morning. When Whistler had read the dispatches I handed him he said:
"Cody, I want to send information to General Terry concerning the Indians that have been skirmishing around here all day. I have been trying to induce some member in my command to carry them, but no one wants to go."
"Get your dispatches ready, general," I replied, "and I'll take them."
He went into his quarters and came out presently with a package, which he handed me. I mounted the same horse which had brought me, and at eight o'clock that evening reached Terry's headquarters, just as his force was about to march.
As soon as Terry had read the dispatches he halted his command, which was already under way. Then he rode on ahead to overtake General Crook, with whom he held a council. At General Terry's urgent request I accompanied him on a scout for Dry Fork, on the Missouri. We marched three days, a little to the east of north. When we reached the buffalo range we discovered some fresh Indian signs. The redskins had been killing buffalo, and the evidences of their work were very plain. Terry now called on me to carry dispatches to Colonel Rice, who was still encamped at the mouth of Glendive Creek on the Yellowstone. This was about eighty miles distant.
Night had set in with a storm. A drizzling rain was falling, which made the going slippery, and made the blackness of the Western Plains still blacker. I was entirely unacquainted with the section of the country through which I was to ride. I therefore traveled all night and remained in seclusion in the daytime. I had too many plans for the future to risk a shot from a hostile redskin who might be hunting white men along my way.
At daylight I unsaddled my mount and made a hearty breakfast of bacon and hardtack. Then I lighted my pipe, and, making a pillow of my saddle, lay down to rest.
The smoke and the fatigue of the night's journey soon made me drowsy, and before I knew it I was fast asleep. Suddenly I was awakened by a loud rumbling noise. I seized my gun instantly, and sprang toward my horse, which I had picketed in a hidden spot in the brush near by where he would be out of sight of any passing Indians.
Climbing a steep hill, I looked cautiously over the country from which the noise appeared to come. There before me was a great herd of buffalo, moving at full gallop. Twenty Indians were behind it, riding hard and firing into the herd as they rode. Others near by were cutting up the carcasses of the animals that had already been killed.
I saddled my horse and tied him near me. Then I crawled on my stomach to the summit of the hill, and for two hours I lay there watching the progress of the chase.
When the Indians had killed all the buffalo they wanted they rode off in the direction whence they had come. This happened to be the way that I hoped to go on my own expedition. I made up my mind that their camp was located somewhere between me and Glendive Creek. I was not at all eager to have any communication with these gentlemen. Therefore, when I resumed my journey at nightfall, I made a wide detour around the place where I believed their camp would be. I avoided it successfully, reaching Colonel Rice's camp just after daybreak.
The colonel had been fighting Indians almost every day since he encamped at this point. He was anxious that Terry should know of this so that reënforcements might be sent, and the country cleared of the redskins. Of course it fell to my lot to carry this word back to Terry.
I undertook the mission willingly enough, for by this time I was pretty well used to night riding through a country beset with perils, and rather enjoyed it.
The strain of my recent rides had told on me, but the excitement bore me up. Indeed, when a man is engaged in work of this kind, the exhilaration is such that he forgets all about the wear and tear on his system, and not until all danger is over and he is safely resting in camp does he begin to feel what he has been through. Then a good long sleep usually puts him all right again.
Many and many a time I have driven myself beyond what I believed was the point of physical endurance, only to find that I was ready for still further effort if the need should arise. The fact that I continued in rugged health during all the time I was on the Plains, and have had little illness throughout my life, seems to prove that living and working outdoors, despite its hardships, is far better for a man than any sedentary occupation can possibly be.
I started back to overhaul General Terry, and on the third day out I found him at the head of Deer Creek. He was on his way to Colonel Rice's camp. He was headed in the right direction, but bearing too far east. He asked me to guide his command in the right course, which I did. On arriving at Glendive I bade good-by to the general and his officers and took passage on theFar West, which was on her way down the Missouri. At Bismarck I left the steamer, and proceeded by rail to Rochester, New York.
It has been a great pleasure to me to meet and know and serve with such men as Crook and Miles. I had served long enough on the Plains to know Indian fighters when I saw them, and I cannot close this chapter without a tribute to both of these men.
Miles had come to the West as a young man with a brilliant war record, having risen to a major-general of volunteers at the age, I think, of 26 or 27.
He took naturally to Indian fighting. He quickly divested himself of all the tactics that were useless in this particular kind of warfare, and learned as much about the Indians as any man ever knew.
Years later, when I was giving my Wild West Show in Madison Square Garden, General Miles visited it as my guest.
The Indians came crowding around him, and followed him wherever he went, although other army officers of high reputation accompanied him on the visit.
This Indian escort at last proved to be almost embarrassing, for the general could not go to any part of the Garden without four or five of the braves silently dogging his footsteps and drinking in his every word.
When this was called to my attention I called one of the old men aside and asked him why he and his brothers followed Miles so eagerly.
"Heap big chief!" was the reply. "Him lickum Injun chiefs. Him biggest White Chief. Heap likum." Which was really a very high tribute, as Indians are not given to extravagant praise.
When we have met from time to time General Miles has been kind enough to speak well of me and the work I have done on the Plains. I am very glad to have this opportunity of returning the compliment.
Crook was a man who lived and fought without any ostentation, but who had high courage and used rare judgment. The fact that he had command of the forces in the West had much to do with their successes in subduing the hostile red man. Indeed, had not our army taught the Indians that it was never safe, and usually extremely dangerous, to go on the warpath against the Big White Chief, organizations might have been formed which would have played sad havoc with our growing Western civilization.
I am and always have been a friend of the Indian. I have always sympathized with him in his struggle to hold the country that was his by right of birth.
But I have always held that in such a country as America the march of civilization was inevitable, and that sooner or later the men who lived in roving tribes, making no real use of the resources of the country, would be compelled to give way before the men who tilled the soil and used the lands as the Creator intended they should be used.
In my dealings with the Indians we always understood each other. In a fight we did our best to kill each other. In times of peace we were friends. I could always do more with the Indians than most white men, and I think my success in getting so many of them to travel with my organization was because I understood them and they understood me.
Shrewd as were the generals who conducted the fight against the Indians, I believe they could have done little without the services of the men who all over the West served them in the capacity of scouts.
The adventures of small scouting parties were at times even more thrilling than the battles between the Indians and the troops.
Among the ablest of the scouts I worked with in the West were Frank Grouard and Baptiste Pourier. At one time in his childhood Grouard was to all intents and purposes a Sioux Indian. He lived with the tribe, hunted and fought with them, and wore the breech-clout as his only summer garment.
He met some hunters and trappers while living this life. Their language recalled his childhood, and he presently deserted his red-skinned friends and came back to his own race.
His knowledge of the tongues of the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Crow Indians and his marvelous proficiency in the universal sign language made him an extremely desirable acquisition to the service.
Grouard and "Big Bat" (Baptiste Pourier) were the two scouts that guided Lieutenant Sibley, a young officer of experience and ability, on a scout with about thirty officers and John Finnerty of the ChicagoTimes, a newspaper man who was known all over the West.
At eight o'clock at night they left their halting-place, Big Goose Creek, and in the silent moonlight made a phantom promenade toward the Little Big Horn.
Presently they made out the presence of a war party ahead of them, and one of the scouts of this outfit began riding around in a circle, which meant that the enemy had been discovered.
There were too many Indians to fight in the open, so Grouard led the soldiers to a deep thicket where there were plenty of logs and fallen timber out of which to make breastworks.
The Indians repeatedly circled around them and often charged, but the white men, facing a massacre like that of Custer's men, steadily held them at bay by accurate shooting.
Soon red reënforcements began to arrive. The Indians, feeling that they had now a sufficient advantage, attempted another charge, as the result of which they lost White Antelope, one of the bravest of their chiefs.
This dampened their ardor, but they kept up an incessant firing that rattled against the log breastworks like hailstones.
Fearing that the Indians would soon start a fire and burn them out, Sibley ordered a retreat. The two scouts were left behind to keep up a desultory fire after night had fallen, in order to make the Indians think the party was still in its breastworks. Then the other men in single file struggled up the precipitous sides of the mountain above them, marching, stumbling, climbing, and falling according to the character of the ground they passed over.
The men left behind finally followed on. The temperature fell below zero, and the night was one of suffering and horror. At last they gained a point in the mountains about twenty-five miles distant from Crook's command.
Halting in a sheltered cave, they got a little sleep and started out just in time to escape observation by a large war-party which was scouting in their direction.
At night the jaded party, more dead than alive, forded Tongue River up to their armpits. Two were so exhausted that it was not considered advisable to permit them to plunge into the icy stream, and they were left on the bank till help could be sent to them.
Those that got across dragged themselves over the trail to Crook's camp. The rocks had broken their boots, and with bleeding feet and many a bullet wound they managed to get within sight of the camp, where two men of the Second Cavalry found them and brought them in.
Sibley's men threw themselves on the ground, too exhausted to go another step. Hot food was brought them, and they soon were strong enough to go to Camp Cloud Peak, to receive the hospitality and sympathy of their comrades. The two men who had been left behind were brought in and cared for.
This expedition was one of the most perilous in the history of the Plains, and the fact that there were any survivors is due to the skill, coolness, and courage of the two scouts, Grouard and Pourier.
CHAPTER X
My work on the Plains brought me many friends, among them being some of the truest and staunchest that any man ever had. You who live your lives in cities or among peaceful ways cannot always tell whether your friends are the kind who would go through fire for you. But on the Plains one's friends have an opportunity to prove their mettle. And I found out that most of mine would as cheerfully risk their lives for me as they would give me a light for my pipe when I asked it.
Such a friend was old "Buffalo Chips," who certainly deserves a place in these memoirs of mine.
One morning while I was sitting on my porch at North Platte, playing with my children, I saw a man limping on crutches from the direction of the Post hospital. He was a middle-aged man, but had long, flowing white hair, and the most deeply-pitted face I have ever beheld.
Noticing that he seemed confused and in trouble, I sent the children out to bring him to me. He came up haltingly, and in response to my questioning told me that he had been rejected by the hospital because he had been a Confederate soldier and it was against their rules to accept any but Union veterans.
I turned the stranger over to my sister, who prepared a meal for him while I went over to the adjutant's office to see what could be done. I met General Emory in the adjutant's office, and on my promise to pay the ex-Confederate's bills, he gave me an order admitting him to the hospital. Soon my new protégé, who said his name was Jim White, was duly installed, and receiving the treatment of which he stood in sore need.
In a few weeks he had nearly recovered from the wound in his leg which had necessitated the use of his crutches. Every day he came to my house to play with the children and to care for my horses, a service for which he gruffly refused to accept any pay.
Now and then he would borrow one of my rifles for a little practice. I soon discovered that he was a splendid shot, as well as an unusually fine horseman. My surprise at these accomplishments was somewhat lessened when he told me that he had spent his four years' war service as one of General J.E.B. Stuart's scouts. Stuart had no other kind of men in his command.
For years, wherever I went, no matter how dangerous the errand, my new friend went along. The first time he followed me I still remember vividly. I had left the Post on a five days' scout, and was particularly anxious that no one should know the direction I was to take.
When I was four or five miles from the Post I looked back and saw a solitary horseman riding in my direction about a mile in my rear. When I stopped he stopped. I rode on for a little way and looked around again. He was exactly the same distance behind me, and pulled his horse up when I halted. This maneuver I repeated several times, always with the same result. Considerably disquieted by this mysterious pursuit, I decided to discover the reason for it. I whipped up my horse and when I had put a sandhill between myself and the man behind I made a quick detour through a ravine, and came up in his rear. Then I boldly rode up till I came abreast of him.
He swung around when he heard me coming, and blushed like a girl when he saw how I had tricked him.
"Look here, White," I demanded, "what the devil are you following me in this way for?"
"Mrs. Cody said I could follow you if I wanted to," he said, "and, well, I just followed you, that's all."
That was all he would say. But I knew that he had come along to keep me from getting hurt if I was attacked, and would rather die than admit his real reason. So I told him to come along, and come along he did.
There was no need for his services on that occasion, but a little later he put me in debt to him for my life. He and I rode together into a border town, where there were a few gentlemen in the horse-stealing business who had reason to wish me moved along to some other sphere. I left White to look after the horses as we reached the town, and went into a hotel to get a nip, for which I felt a very great need. White noticed a couple of rough-looking chaps behind the barn as he put the horses away and quietly slipped to a window where he could overhear their conversation.
"We'll go in while he is taking a drink," one of them was saying, "and shoot him from behind. He'll never have a chance."
Without a word to me, White hurried into the hotel and got behind the door. Presently the two men entered, both with drawn revolvers. But before they could raise them White covered them with his own weapon and commanded them sternly to throw up their hands, an order with which they instantly complied after one look at his face.
I wheeled at the order, and recognized his two captives as the men I was looking for, a pair of horse-thieves and murderers whom I had been sent to apprehend. My revolvers were put into instant requisition, and I kept them covered while White removed the guns with which they had expected to put me out of their way.
With White's help I conducted these gentlemen forty miles back to the sheriff's office, and they walked every step of the way. Each of them got ten years in the penitentiary as soon as they could be tried. They either forgave me or forgot me when they got out, for I never heard of either of them again.
In the campaign of 1876 I secured employment for White as a scout. He was with me when Terry and Crook's commands separated on the Yellowstone. By this time he had come to copy my gait, my dress, my speech, and even my fashion of wearing my hair down on my shoulders, though mine at that time was brown, and his was white as the driven snow.
We were making a raid on an Indian village, which was peopled with very lively and very belligerent savages. I had given White an old red-lined coat, one which I had worn conspicuously in a number of battles, and which the Indians had marked as a special target on that account.
A party of Indians had been driven from among the lodges into a narrow gorge, and some of the soldiers, among them Captain Charles King, had gone after them. As they were proceeding cautiously, keeping tinder cover as much as possible, King observed White creeping along the opposite bluff, rifle in hand, looking for a chance at the savages huddled below, and hoping to distract their fire so they would do as little damage as possible to the soldiers who were closing in on them.
White crawled along on all-fours till he reached a stunted tree on the brim of the ravine. There he halted, brought his rifle to his shoulder in readiness to aim and raised himself slowly to his feet. He was about to fire, when one of the Indians in the hole below spotted the red-lined coat. There was a crack, a puff of smoke, and White toppled over, with a bullet through his heart. The coat had caught the attention of the savages, and thus I had been the innocent means of my friend's death; for, with the soldiers pressing them so hard, it is not likely that any of the warriors would have wasted a shot had they not thought they were getting Pa-ho-has-ka. For a long time the Indians believed that I would be a menace to them no more. But they discovered their mistake later, and I sent a good many of them to the Happy Hunting-Grounds as a sort of tribute to my friend.
Poor old White! A more faithful man never took a trail, nor a braver. He was a credit to me, and to the name which General Sheridan had first given him in derision, but which afterward became an honor, the name of "Buffalo Chips."
When Terry and Crook's commands joined on the Yellowstone both commands went into camp together and guards were placed to prevent surprise. The scene was typical of the Old West, but it would astonish anyone whose whole idea of warfare has been gained by a visit to a modern military post or training camp, or the vast camps where the reserve forces are drilled and equipped for the great European war.
Generals Crook, Merritt, and Carr were in rough hunting rigs, utterly without any mark of their rank. Deerskin, buckskin, corduroy, canvas, and rags indiscriminately covered the rest of the command, so that unless you knew the men it was totally impossible to distinguish between officers and enlisted men. However, every one in the commands knew every one else, and there was no confusion.
A great part of that night was spent in swapping stories of recent experiences. All of them were thrilling, even to veteran campaigners fresh from the trail. There was no need of drawing the long bow in those days. The truth was plenty exciting enough to suit the most exacting, and we sat about like schoolboys, drinking in each other's tales, and telling our own in exchange.
A story of a personal adventure and a hairbreadth escape in which Lieutenant De Rudio figured was so typical of the fighting days of the West that I want my readers to know it. I shall tell it, as nearly as I can, just as it came to me around the flickering fire in that picturesque border camp.
De Rudio had just returned from his adventure, and he told it to us between puffs of his pipe so realistically that I caught several of my old friends of the Plains peering about into the darkness as if to make sure that no lurking redskins were creeping up on them.
In the fight of a few days before De Rudio was guarding a pony crossing with eight men when one of them sang out:
"Lieutenant, get your horse, quick. Reno (the commander of the outfit) is retreating!" No trumpet had sounded, however, and no orders had been given, so the lieutenant hesitated to retire. His men left in a hurry, but he remained, quietly waiting for the call.
Presently, looking behind him, he saw thirty or forty Indians coming full gallop. He wheeled and started to get into safer quarters. As lie did so they cut loose with a volley. He leaned low on his horse as they shot, and the bullets sang harmlessly over his head.
Before him was a fringe of thick underbrush along the river, and into this he forced his unwilling horse. The bullets followed and clipped the twigs about him like scissors. At last he gained the creek, forded, and mounted the bank on the other side. Here, instead of safety, he found hundreds of Indians, all busily shooting at the soldiers, who were retreating discreetly in the face of a greatly superior force. He was entirely cut off from retreat, unless he chose to make a bold dash for his life right through the middle of the Indians. This he was about to do, when a young Indian, who had observed him, sent a shot after him, and his horse fell dead under him, rolling over and over, while he managed to scramble to his feet.
The shot had attracted the attention of all the Indians in that immediate neighborhood, and there were plenty of them there for all offensive purposes. De Rudio jumped down the creek bank and hid in an excavation while a hail of bullets spattered the water ahead of him and raised a dozen little clouds of dust at his feet.
So heavy had this volley been that the Indians decided that the bullets had done their work, and a wild yell broke from them.
Suddenly the yell changed to another sort of outcry, and the firing abruptly ceased. Peering out, De Rudio saw Captain Benteen's column coming up over the hill. He began to hope that his rescue was at hand. But in a few minutes the soldiers disappeared and the Indians all started off after them.
Just beyond the hill was the noise of a lively battle, and he made up his mind that Reno's command had rallied, and that if he could join them he might be saved.
Working his way softly through the brush he was nearing the summit of the slope when he heard his name whispered and saw three of his own company in the brush. Two of them were mounted. The horse of the third had been killed.
The three men remained in the bushes, lying as low as they could and making no sound. Looking out now and then, they could see an old Indian woman going about, taking scalps and mutilating the bodies of the soldiers who had been slain. Most of the warriors were occupied with the battle, but now and then a warrior, suspicious that soldiers were still lurking in the brush, would ride over in their direction and fire a few shots that whistled uncomfortably close to their heads.
Presently the firing on the hill ceased, and hundreds of Indians came slowly back. But they were hard pressed by the soldiers, and the battle was soon resumed, to break out intermittently through the entire night.
In a quiet interval the two soldiers got their horses, and with their companion and De Rudio holding to the animals' tails forded the river and made a détour round the Indians. Several times they passed close to Indians. Once or twice they were fired on and answered the fire, but their luck was with them and they escaped bringing a general attack down upon them.
As they were making their way toward the edge of the clearing they saw directly before them a party of men dressed in the ragged uniforms of American cavalrymen, and all drew deep breaths of relief. Help seemed now at hand. But just as they sprang forward to join their supposed comrades a fiendish yell broke from the horsemen. In another instant the four unfortunates were rushing to cover, with a dozen Indians, all dressed in the clothing taken from dead soldiers, in hot pursuit.
The Indians had been planning a characteristic piece of Sioux strategy. As fast as it could be accomplished they had been stripping the clothing from dead and wounded soldiers and garbing themselves in it with the purpose of deceiving the outposts of Reno's command and surprising the Americans as soon as day broke. Had it not been for the accidental discovery of the ruse by De Rudio's party it might have succeeded only too well.
The lieutenant and his companions managed to get away safely and to find shelter in the woods. But the Indians immediately fired the underbrush and drove them further and further on. Then, just as they had begun to despair of their lives, their pursuers, who had been circling around the tangle of scrub growth, began singing a slow chant and withdrew to the summit of the hill.
There they remained in council a little time and then cantered away single file.
Fearing another trap, the white men remained for weary hours in their hiding-place, but at last were compelled by thirst and hunger to come out.
No Indians were visible, nor did any appear as, worn out and dispirited, they dragged themselves to the camp of the soldiers. In the forty-eight hours since he had been cut off from his command De Rudio had undergone all the horrors of Indian warfare and a hundred times had given himself up for dead.
Bullets had passed many times within a few inches of him. Half a dozen times only a lucky chance had intervened between him and the horrible death that Indians know so well how to inflict. Yet, save for the bruises from his fall off his horse, and the abrasions of the brush through which he had traveled, he had never received a scratch.
CHAPTER XI
Of all the Indians I encountered in my years on the Plains the most resourceful and intelligent, as well as the most dangerous, were the Sioux. They had the courage of dare-devils combined with real strategy. They mastered the white man's tactics as soon as they had an opportunity to observe them. Incidentally they supplied all thinking and observing white commanders with a great deal that was well worth learning in the art of warfare. The Sioux fought to win, and in a desperate encounter were absolutely reckless of life.
But they also fought wisely, and up to the minute of closing in they conserved their own lives with a vast amount of cleverness. The maxim put into words by the old Confederate fox, Forrest: "Get there fastest with the mostest," was always a fighting principle with the Sioux.
They were a strong race of men, the braves tall, with finely shaped heads and handsome features. They had poise and dignity and a great deal of pride, and they seldom forgot either a friend or an enemy.
The greatest of all the Sioux in my time, or in any time for that matter, was that wonderful old fighting man, Sitting Bull, whose life will some day be written by a historian who can really give him his due.
Sitting Bull it was who stirred the Indians to the uprising whose climax was the massacre of the Little Big Horn and the destruction of Custer's command.
For months before this uprising he had been going to and fro among the Sioux and their allies urging a revolt against the encroaching white man. It was easy at that time for the Indians to secure rifles. The Canadian-French traders to the north were only too glad to trade them these weapons for the splendid supplies of furs which the Indians had gathered. Many of these rifles were of excellent construction, and on a number of occasions we discovered to our cost that they outranged the army carbines with which we were equipped.
After the Custer massacre the frontier became decidedly unsafe for Sitting Bull and the chiefs who were associated with him, and he quietly withdrew to Canada, where he was for the time being safe from pursuit.
There he stayed till his followers began leaving him and returning to their reservations in the United States. Soon he had only a remnant of his followers and his immediate family to keep him company. Warily he began negotiating for immunity, and when he was fully assured that if he would use his influence to quiet his people and keep them from the warpath his life would be spared, he consented to return.
He had been lonely and unhappy in Canada. An accomplished orator and a man with a gift of leadership, he had pined for audiences to sway and for men to do his bidding. He felt sure that these would be restored to him once he came back among his people. As to his pledges, I have no doubt that he fully intended to live up to them. He carried in his head all the treaties that had been made between his people and the white men, and could recite their minutest details, together with the dates of their making and the names of the men who had signed for both sides.
But he was a stickler for the rights of his race, and he devoted far more thought to the trend of events than did most of his red brothers.
Here was his case, as he often presented it to me:
"The White Man has taken most of our land. He has paid us nothing for it. He has destroyed or driven away the game that was our meat. In 1868 he arranged to build through the Indians' land a road on which ran iron horses that ate wood and breathed fire and smoke. We agreed. This road was only as wide as a man could stretch his arms. But the White Man had taken from the Indians the land for twenty miles on both sides of it. This land he had sold for money to people in the East. It was taken from the Indians. But the Indians got nothing for it.
"The iron horse brought from the East men and women and children, who took the land from the Indians and drove out the game. They built fires, and the fires spread and burned the prairie grass on which the buffalo fed. Also it destroyed the pasturage for the ponies of the Indians. Soon the friends of the first White Men came and took more land. Then cities arose and always the White Man's lands were extended and the Indians pushed farther and farther away from the country that the Great Father had given them and that had always been theirs.
"When treaties were broken and the Indians trespassed on the rights of the White Man, my chiefs and I were always here to adjust the White Man's wrongs.
"When treaties were broken and the Indians' rights were infringed, no one could find the white chiefs. They were somewhere back toward the rising sun. There was no one to give us justice. New chiefs of the White Men came to supplant the old chiefs. They knew nothing of our wrongs and laughed at us.
"When the Sioux left Minnesota and went beyond the Big Muddy the white chiefs promised them they would never again be disturbed. Then they followed us across the river, and when we asked for lands they gave us each a prairie chicken's flight four ways (a hundred and sixty acres); this they gave us, who once had all the land there was, and whose habit is to roam as far as a horse can carry us and then continue our journey till we have had our fill of wandering.
"We are not as many as the White Man. But we know that this land is our land. And while we live and can fight, we will fight for it. If the White Man does not want us to fight, why does he take our land? If we come and build our lodges on the White Man's land, the White Man drives us away or kills us. Have we not the same right as the White Man?"
The forfeiture of the Black Hills and unwise reduction of rations kept alive the Indian discontent. When, in 1889, Congress passed a law dividing the Sioux reservation into many smaller ones so as to isolate the different tribes of the Dakota nation a treaty was offered them. This provided payment for the ponies captured or destroyed in the war of 1876 and certain other concessions, in return for which the Indians were to cede about half their land, or eleven million acres, which was to be opened up for settlement.
The treaty was submitted to the Indians for a vote. They came in from the woods and the plains to vote on it, and it was carried by a very narrow majority, many of the Indians insisting that they had been coerced by their necessities into casting favorable ballots.
Congress delayed and postponed the fulfillment of the promised conditions, and the Indian unrest increased as the months went by. Even after the land had been taken over and settled up, Congress did not pass the appropriation that was necessary before the Indians could get their money.
Sitting Bull was appealed to for aid, and once more began employing his powerful gift of oratory in the interest of armed resistance against the white man.
Just at this time a legend whose origin was beyond all power to fathom became current among the red men of the north.
From one tribe to another spread the tidings that a Messiah was to come back to earth to use his miraculous power in the interest of the Indian. The whites were to be driven from the land of the red man. The old days of the West were to be restored. The ranges were to be re-stocked with elk, antelope, deer, and buffalo.
Soon a fever of fanaticism had infected every tribe. Not alone were the Sioux the victims of this amazing delusion, but every tribe on the continent shared in it.
There was to be a universal brotherhood of red men. Old enmities were forgotten. Former foes became fast friends. The Yaquis in Mexico sent out word that they would be ready for the great Armageddon when it came. As far north as Alaska there were ghost dances and barbaric festivities to celebrate the coming restoration of the Indian to the lands of his inheritance.
And as the Indians danced, they talked and sang and thought of war, while their hatred of the white man broke violently forth.
Very much disquieted at the news of what was going on the War Department sent out word to stop the dancing and singing. Stop it! You could as easily have stopped the eruption of Mount Lassen! Among the other beliefs that spread among the Indians was one that all the sick would be healed and be able to go into battle, and that young and old, squaws and braves alike, would be given shirts which would turn the soldiers' bullets like armor-plate.
Every redskin believed that he could not be injured. None of them had any fear of battle, or any suspicions that he could be injured in the course of the great holy war that was to come.