THE SIOUX OUTBREAK IN SOUTH DAKOTA

CHIS-CHIS-CHASH SCOUT ON THE FLANKS

It is such a mere detail that I will not waste time on it, but this freezing out of your blankets four or five times every night, and this having to go out and coax a cooking fire into a cheerful spirit, can occupy a man’s mind so that any words not depraved do not seem of any consequence. During one of the early hours I happened to sleep, and in this interval Mr. Struthers came into our tepee. He had been on a night’s ride to the colonel for orders, and in passing, dropped in for a chat with Casey. When about to go, he said,

“Oh, by-the-way, I met Remington.”

“Do you want to renew the acquaintance?” replied Casey.

“Why—how—why—yes.”

“Well, he’s there, on the other side of this tent.” And Mr. Struthers passed out in the gloom, and his muttered expressions of astonishment were presently lost in the distance. I had ridden and camped with Mr. Struthers a few days since in the up country, while on the way to “the galloping Sixth.”

The next day we passed down the river, and soon saw what to inexperienced eyes might be dark gray rocks on the top of yellow hills. They were the pickets of the Cheyennes, and presently we saw the tepees and the ponies, and then we rode into camp. The men from Tongue River greeted the men from Pine Ridge—the relatives and friends—withki-yisof delight. The corps from Pine Ridge was organized from the Cheyennes on that reservation, and was as yet only partially disciplined,and in no way to be compared with Casey’s Old Guard from Tongue River. Some two nights before, the Sioux had fired into their camp, and they had skirmished with the enemy. The vermilion of the war-path was on every countenance, and, through sympathy, I saw that our men too had gone into this style of decorative art; for faces which had previously been fresh and clean now passed my vision streaked and daubed into preternatural ferocity.

It grew late and later, and yet Lieutenant Struthers did not return from his scouting of the day. We were alarmed, and wondered and hoped; for scouting through the Bad Lands to the stronghold was dangerous, to state it mildly. A few shots would not be heard twelve miles away in the hills. We pictured black objects lying prone on the sand as we scouted next day—little masses of clay which had been men and horses, but would then be as silent as the bare hillocks about them.

“Ki-yi-yip—a-ou!” and a patter in the gloom.

“That’s Struthers.” We fall over each other as we pile out of the hole in the Sibley, and find Struthers and Lieutenant Byrom, of the Eighth Cavalry, all safe and sound.

“We have been on the stronghold; they are all gone; rustle some coffee,” are words in the darkness; and we crawl back into the tent, where presently the big, honest, jolly eyes of Mr. Struthers look over a quart cup, and we are happy. Byrom was a fine little cavalryman, and I have good reason to know that for impudent daring of that desperately quiet kind he is distinguished in places where all men are brave.

Away goes the courier to the colonel for orders, and after a time back he comes—a wild dash of twelve miles in the dark, and of little moment here, but a life memory to an unaccustomed one.

“We go on the stronghold in the morning,” says Casey; “and now to bed.” A bed consists of two blankets spread on the ground, and all the personal property not otherwise appropriated piled on top. A luxury, mind you, is this; later it was much more simple, consisting of earth for a mattress and the sky for a counterpane.

The sun is not up when in comes the horse herd. My strawberry roan goes sneaking about in the frosty willows, and after sundry well-studied manœuvres I get a grip on the lariat, and am lugged and jerked over the brush until “52 on the nigh front foot” consents to stand still. I saddle up, but have lost my gun. I entreat Mr. Thompson, the interpreter, to help me find it. Mr. Thompson is a man who began fighting for the Union in East Tennessee about thirty years long gone, and he has continued to engage in that work up to date. Mr. Thompson has formed a character which is not as round as a ball, but much more the shape of horn-silver in its native state. He is humorous by turns, and early in my acquaintance he undertook the cultivation of my mind in the art of war as practised on the frontier. On this occasion he at last found my Springfield, and handed it to me with the admonition “that in times like these one warrior can’t look after another warrior’s gun.”

The wagons were to go—well, I never knew where, but they went off over the hills, and I never saw them again for some miserable days and dreary nights. Five Pine Ridge Cheyennes and Mr. Wolf-Voice were my party, and we filed away. At Battle Creek we watered, and crossed the Cheyenne a mile above. My horse was smooth shod, and the river frozen half-way over, so we slid around on the ice, and jumped into the icy waters, got wet, crawled out, slid around some more, and finally landed. Mr. Wolf-Voice looked me over, and smilinglysaid, “Me think you no like ’em”; wherein his conclusion was eminently correct. Who does like to have a mass of ice freeze on him when naturally the weather is cold enough to satisfy a walrus?

It was twelve miles through the defiles of the Bad Lands to the blue ridge of the high mesa where the hostiles had lived. The trail was strewn with dead cattle, some of them having never been touched with a knife. Here and there a dead pony, ridden to a stand-still and left nerveless on the trail. No words of mine can describe these Bad Lands. They are somewhat as Doré pictured hell. One set of buttes, with cones and minarets, gives place in the next mile to natural freaks of a different variety, never dreamed of by mortal man. It is the action of water on clay; there are ashes, or what looks like them. The painter’s whole palette is in one bluff. A year’s study of these colors by Mr. Bierstadt, Professor Marsh, and Mr. Notman might possibly convey to the Eastern mind an idea; so we’ll amble along after Mr. Wolf-Voice, and leave that subject intact.

“Hark!” My little party stops suddenly, and we all listen. I feel stupid.

“You hear ’em?” says Wolf-Voice, in a stage-whisper.

“Hear what?” I say.

“Shots.”

Then we all get out our guns and go galloping like mad. I can’t imagine why, but I spur my horse and perform equestrian feats which in an ordinary frame of mind I should regard as insane. Down a narrow trail we go, with the gravel flying, and through acoulée, up a little hill, on top of which we stop to listen, and then away we go. The blue wall grows nearer, and at last we are under it. A few cotton-wood trees, some frozen water, a little cleft on the bluffs, and I see a trail winding upward. I knowthese warriors are going up there, but I can’t understand precisely how. It is not the first perilous trail I have contemplated; but there are dead cattle lying at the bottom which had fallen off and been killed in the ascent. We dismount and start up. It tells on your wind, and tries the leg muscles. Up a steep place a horse wants to go fast, and you have to keep him from running over you. A bend in the trail where the running water has frozen seems impassable. I jump across it, and then pull the bridle and say, “Come on, boy!” If I were the horse I would balk, but the noble animal will try it. A leap, a plunging, and with a terrible scrabble we are all right. Farther up, and the incline is certainly eighty-five degrees. My horse looses his front feet, but a jerk at the headstall brings him down, and he plunges past me to be caught by an Indian at the top of the trail. For a moment we breathe, and then mount.

"TWO GHOSTS I SAW"

Before us is a great flat plain blackened by fire, and with the grass still burning. Away in the distance, in the shimmer of the air waves, are figures.

“Maybe so dey Sioux,” says Wolf-Voice. And we gallop towards them.

“What will you do if they are?” I ask.

“Stand ’em off,” replies the war-dog.

Half an hour’s ride showed them to be some of our Cheyennes. All about the plain were strewn the remains of dead cattle (heads and horns, half-butchered carcasses, and withal a rather impressive smell), coyotes, and ravens—all very like war. These Brulés must have lived well. There were lodge poles, old fires, and a series of rifle pits across the neck of land which the Sioux had proposed to defend; medicine poles, and near them the sacrifices, among which was food dedicated to the Great Spirit, but eventually consumed by the less exalted members ofCasey’s command. I vandalized a stone pipe and a rawhide stirrup.

The less curious members of our band had gone south, and Wolf-Voice and I rode along together. We discussed war, and I remember two of Wolf-Voice’s opinions. Speaking of infantry and their method of fighting, he said:

“Dese walk-a-heap soldiers dey dig hole—get in—shoot heap—Injun can’t do nothin’ wid ’em—can’t kill ’em—can’t do nothin’ but jes go ’way.”

Then, explaining why the Sioux had shown bad generalship in selecting their position, he turned in his saddle, and said, “De big guns he knock ’em rifle pit, den de calavy lun pas’ in column—Injun no stop calavy—kill ’em heap, but no stop ’em—den de walk-a-heap dey come too, and de Sioux dey go ober de bluffs.” And with wild enthusiasm he added, “De Sioux dey go to hell!” That prospect seemed to delight Mr. Wolf-Voice immensely.

It was a weary ride over the black and smoking plain. A queer mirage was said by my Indian to be the Cheyenne scouts coming after us. Black figures of animals walking slowly along were “starving bronchos abandoned by the hostiles.”

“Cowboy he catch ’em,” said Wolf-Voice.

I explained that Colonel Offley had orders not to allow any citizens to cross the Cheyenne River.

“Cowboy he go give um dam; he come alle samee.”

And I thought Wolf-Voice was probably right.

On the southern edge of the bluffs of the mesa we halted, and found water for man and beast. The command gradually concentrated, and for half an hour we stood on the high points scanning the great flats below, and located the dust of the retiring hostile column andthe back lying scouts. Lieutenant Casey had positive orders not to bring on an engagement, and only desired to hang on their flanks, so as to keep Miles familiar with the hostile movements. A courier started on his lonely ride back with a note for the major-general. Our scouts were flying about far down the valley, and we filed off after them. Presently a little column of dust follows a flying horseman towards us. On, on he comes. The scouts grow uneasy; wild creatures they are, with the suspicion of a red deer and the stealth of a panther.

WATCHING THE DUST OF THE HOSTILES

The Sioux have fired on our scouts. Off we go at a trot, scattering out, unslinging our guns, and the air full of fight. I ride by Casey, and see he is troubled. The orders in his pocket do not call for a fight. Can he hold these wild warriors?

“Struthers, we have got to hold these men,” said Casey, in a tone of voice which was full of meaning. To shorten the story, our men were at last gotten into ranks, and details made to cover the advance. The hostiles were evidently much excited. Little clouds of dust whirling hither and thither showed where the opposing scouts were shadowing each other. The sun was waning, and yet we spurred our weary horses on towards the enemy. Poor beasts! no food and too much exercise since daylight.

The Cheyennes were uneasy, and not at all pleased with this scheme of action. What could they know about the orders in Lieutenant Casey’s pocket, prompted by a commanding general thinking of a thousand and one interests, and with telegrams from Washington directing the avoidance of an Indian war?

Old-soldier Thompson even, with all his intelligence and knowledge of things, felt the wild Berserker battle valor, which he smothered with difficulty, and confinedhimself to potent remarks and spurring of old Piegan. He said: “This is a new kind of war. Them Injuns don’t understand it, and to tell you the truth, I don’t nuther. The Injuns say they have come all the way from Tongue River, and are going back poor. Can’t get Sioux horses, can’t kill Sioux,” and in peroration he confirmed his old impression that “this is a new kind of war”; and then relapsed into reveries of what things used to be before General Miles invented this new kind of war.

In our immediate front was a heavy body of Sioux scouts. Lieutenant Casey was ahead. Men broke from our ranks, but were held with difficulty by Struthers and Getty. Back comes Casey at a gallop. He sees the crisis, and with his hand on his six-shooter, says, “I will shoot the first man through the head who falls out of the ranks.” A mutiny is imminent in the Pine Ridge contingent, but the diplomat Struthers brings order at last, and we file off down the hills to the left, and stop by a stream, while Casey goes back and meets a body of Sioux on a high hill for a powwow. I watched through a glass, and the sun went down as they talked. We had orders not to remove our saddles, and stood in the line nervously expecting anything imaginable to happen. The daring of Casey in this case is simply an instance of a hundred such, and the last one cost him his life. By his prompt measures with his own men, and by his courage in going among the Sioux to powwow, he averted a bloody battle, and obeyed his orders. There was one man between two banks of savage warriors who were fairly frothing at the mouth—a soldier; the sun will never shine upon a better.

At last, after an interminable time, he came away. Far away to the right are two of our scouts driving twobeeves. We see the bright blaze of the six-shooters, the steers tumble, and hunger is no longer one of our woes.

THE HOTCHKISS GUN

The tired horses are unsaddled, to eat and drink and roll. We lay dry cotton-wood limbs on the fires, heavy pickets are told off, and our “bull meat” is cooked in the primitive style. Old Wolf-Voice and another scout are swinging six ribs on a piece of rawhide over a fire, and later he brings me a rib and a little bit of coffee from a roll in his handkerchief. I thought him a “brick,” and mystified him by telling him so.

Three or four Brulés are let in through our pickets, and come “wagging their tails,” as Two-Moons says, but adding, “Don’t you trust the Sioux.” They protest their good intentions, borrow tobacco, and say Lieutenant Casey can send in a wagon for commissaries to Pine Ridge, and also that I can go through their lines with it. Were there ever greater liars on earth?

I sat near the fire and looked intently at one human brute opposite, a perfect animal, so far as I could see. Never was there a face so replete with human depravity, stolid, ferocious, arrogant, and all the rest—ghost-shirt, war-paint, feathers, and arms. As a picture, perfect; as a reality, horrible. Presently they go away, and we prepare for the night. This preparing for the night is a rather simple process. I have stolen my saddle blanket from my poor horse, and, with this laid on the ground, I try my saddle in four or five different positions in its capacity of pillow. The inventor of the Whitman tree never considered this possible use of his handiwork, or he might have done better. I next button the lower three buttons of my overcoat, and thus wrapped “I lie down to pleasant dreams”—of rheumatism.

An hour later and the fires go down. Black forms pass like uneasy spirits, and presently you find yourself thrashingaround in the underbrush across the river after branches to feed that insatiable fire. One comrade breaks through the ice and gets wet, and inelegant remarks come from the shadowy blackness under the river-banks. I think a man shouldn’t use such language even under such circumstances, but I also think very few men wouldn’t. A chilling wind now adds to the misery of the situation, and the heat of the fire goes off in a cloud of sparks to the No Man’s Land across the river. After smoking a pipe for two hours your mouth is raw and your nervous system shattered, so nothing is left but to sit calmly down and just suffer. You can hate the Chinese on the other side of the world, who are now enjoying the rays of the sun.

And morning finds you in the saddle. It always does. I don’t know how it is—a habit of life, I suppose. Mornings ought to find me cosily ensconced in a good bed, but in retrospect they seem always to be in the saddle, with a good prospect of all day ahead, and evening finds me with a chunk of bull meat and without blankets, until one fine day we come to our wagons, our Sibleys, and the little luxuries of the mess chest.

The next morning I announced my intention of going to Pine Ridge Agency, which is twenty-five miles away. Mr. Thompson, two scouts, and a Swedish teamster are to go in for provisions and messages. Mr. Thompson got in the wagon. I expressed my astonishment at this and the fact that he had no carbines, as we expected to go through the hostile pickets and camp. He said, “If I can’t talk them Injuns out of killin’ me, I reckon I’ll have to go.” I trotted along with Red-Bear and Hairy-Arm, and a mile and a half ahead went the courier, Wells. Poor man! in two hours he lay bleeding in the road, with a bullet through the hips, and called two days for waterbefore he “struck the long trail to the kingdom come,” as the cowboys phrase it.

We could see two black columns of smoke, which we did not understand. After we had gone eight or ten miles, and were just crossing a ravine, we saw a Sioux buck on a little hill just ahead, out of pistol-shot. He immediately rode the “danger signal.” Red-Bear turned his horse in the “peace sign,” and advanced. We drove over the ravine, and halted. I dismounted. Six young Brulé Sioux rose out of the ground, and rode up to Red-Bear, and the hills were full of pickets to the right and left. We waited to hear the result of Red-Bear’s conversation, when he presently came back and spoke to Thompson in Cheyenne. I looked at him; his eyes were snapping, and his facial muscles twitched frightfully. This was unusual, and I knew that things were not well.

“Red-Bear says we will have to go back,” explained Thompson; and turning to Red-Bear he requested that two Sioux might come closer, and talk with us. Things looked ominous to me, not understanding Cheyenne, which was being talked. “This is a bad hole, and I reckon our cake is dough right here,” said Thompson.

Hairy-Arm’s face was impassive, but his dark eyes wandered from Brulé to Brulé with devilish calculation. Two young bucks came up, and one asked Thompson for tobacco, whereat he was handed a package of Durham by Thompson, which was not returned.

“It’s lucky for me that tobacco ain’t a million dollars,” sighed Thompson.

Another little buck slipped up behind me, whereat Mr. Thompson gave me a warning look. Turning, I advanced on him quickly (I wanted to be as near as possible, not being armed), and holding out my hand, said, “How,colah?” He did not like to take it, but he did, and I was saved the trouble of further action.

“We’ll never get this wagon turned around,” suggested Mr. Thompson, as the teamster whipped up; but we did. And as we commenced our movement on Casey’s camp, Mr. Thompson said, “Go slow now; don’t run, or they’ll sure shoot.”

“Gemme gun,” said the little scout Red-Bear, and we all got our arms from the wagon.

There was no suspense now. Things had begun to happen. A little faster, yet faster, we go up the little banks of thecoulée, and, ye gods! what!—five fully armed, well-mounted cowboys—a regular rescue scene from Buffalo Bill’s show.

“Go back!” shouted Thompson.

Bang! bang! bang! and the bullets whistle around and kick up the dust. Away we go.

Four bucks start over the hills to our right to flank us. Red-Bear talked loudly in Cheyenne.

Thompson repeated, “Red-Bear says if any one is hit, get off in the grass and lie down; we must all hang together.”

We all yelled, “We will.”

A well-mounted man rode like mad ahead of the laboring team horses to carry the news to the scout camp. The cowboys, being well mounted, could easily have gotten away, but they stuck like true blues.

Here is where the great beauty of American character comes out. Nothing can be taken seriously by men used to danger. Above the pounding of the horses and the rattle of the wagon and through the dust came the cowboy song from the lips of Mr. Thompson:

“Roll your tail,And roll her high;We’ll all be angelsBy-and-by.”

“Roll your tail,

And roll her high;

We’ll all be angels

By-and-by.”

A RUN TO THE SCOUT CAMP

We deployed on the flanks of the wagon so that the team horses might not be shot, which would have stopped the whole outfit, and we did ten miles at a record-breaking gallop. We struck the scout camp in a blaze of excitement. The Cheyennes were in war-paint, and the ponies’ tails were tied up and full of feathers. Had the Sioux materialized at that time, Mr. Casey would have had his orders broken right there.

After a lull in the proceedings, Mr. Thompson confided to me that “the next time I go to war in a wagon it will put the drinks on me”; and he saddled Piegan, and patted his neck in a way which showed his gratification at the change in transport. We pulled out again for the lower country, and as our scouts had seen the dust of Colonel Sanford’s command, we presently joined them.

Any remarks made to Mr. Thompson on the tobacco subject are taken seriously, and he has intimated to me a quiet yearning for a shot at “the particular slit-mouthed Brulé who got away with that Durham.”

How we awoke next morning with the sleet freezing in our faces, and how we made camp in the blizzard, and borrowed Sibley stoves of the soldiers, and how we were at last comfortable, and spent New-Year’s Eve in a proper manner, is of little interest.

I was awakened at a late hour that night by Captain Baldwin, of General Miles’s staff, and told to saddle up for a night’s ride to Pine Ridge. This was the end of my experience with Lieutenant Casey and his gallant corps. We shook hands cheerily in the dim candle-light of the tepee, and agreeing to meet in New York at somenot distant day, I stepped out from the Sibley, mounted, and rode away in the night.

Three days later I had eaten my breakfast on the dining-car, and had settled down to a cigar and a Chicago morning paper. The big leads at the top of the column said, “Lieutenant E. W. Casey Shot.” Casey shot! I look again. Yes; despatches from head-quarters—a fact beyond question.

A nasty little Brulé Sioux had made hiscoup, and shot away the life of a man who would have gained his stars in modern war as naturally as most of his fellows would their eagles. He had shot away the life of an accomplished man; the best friend the Indians had; a man who did not know “fear”; a young man beloved by his comrades, respected by his generals and by the Secretary of War. The squaws of another race will sing the death-song of their benefactor, and woe to the Sioux if the Northern Cheyennes get a chance tocoup!

“Try to avoid bloodshed,” comes over the wires from Washington. “Poor savages!” comes the plaintive wail of the sentimentalist from his place of security; but who is to weep for the men who hold up a row of brass buttons for any hater of the United States to fire a gun at? Are the squaws of another race to do the mourning for American soldiers? Are the men of another race to hope for vengeance? Bah!

I sometimes think Americans lack a virtue which the military races of Europe possess. Possibly they may never need it. I hope not. American soldiers of our frontier days have learned not to expect sympathy in the East, but where one like Casey goes down there are many places where Sorrow will spread her dusky pinions and the light grow dim.

We discussed the vague reports of the Wounded Knee fight in the upper camps of the cordon, and old hands said it could be no ordinary affair because of the large casualty. Two days after I rode into the Pine Ridge Agency, very hungry and nearly frozen to death, having ridden with Captain Baldwin, of the staff, and a Mr. Miller all night long. I had to look after a poor horse, and see that he was groomed and fed, which require considerable tact and “hustling” in a busy camp. Then came my breakfast. That struck me as a serious matter at the time. There were wagons and soldiers—the burial party going to the Wounded Knee to do its solemn duty. I wanted to go very much. I stopped to think; in short, I hesitated, and of course was “lost,” for after breakfast they had gone. Why did I not follow them? Well, my natural prudence had been considerably strengthened a few days previously by a half-hour’s interview with six painted Brulé Sioux, who seemed to be in command of the situation. To briefly end the matter, the burial party was fired on, and my confidence in my own good judgment was vindicated to my own satisfaction.

I rode over to the camp of the Seventh United States Cavalry, and met all the officers, both wounded and well, and a great many of the men. They told me their stories in that inimitable way which is studied art with warriors. To appreciate brevity you must go to a soldier.He shrugs his shoulders, and points to the bridge of his nose, which has had a piece cut out by a bullet, and says, “Rather close, but don’t amount to much.” An inch more, and some youngster would have had his promotion.

I shall not here tell the story of the Seventh Cavalry fight with Big Foot’s band of Sioux on the Wounded Knee; that has been done in the daily papers; but I will recount some small-talk current in the Sibley tepees, or the “white man’s war tents,” as the Indians call them.

Lying on his back, with a bullet through the body, Lieutenant Mann grew stern when he got to the critical point in his story. “I saw three or four young bucks drop their blankets, and I saw that they were armed. ‘Be ready to fire, men; there is trouble.’ There was an instant, and then we heard sounds of firing in the centre of the Indians. ‘Fire!’ I shouted, and we poured it into them.”

“Oh yes, Mann, but the trouble began when the old medicine-man threw the dust in the air. That is the old Indian signal of ‘defiance,’ and no sooner had he done that act than those bucks stripped and went into action. Just before that some one told me that if we didn’t stop that old man’s talk he would make trouble. He said that the white men’s bullets would not go through the ghost shirts.”

Said another officer, “The way those Sioux worked those Winchesters was beautiful.” Which criticism, you can see, was professional.

Added another, “One man was hit early in the firing, but he continued to pump his Winchester; but growing weaker and weaker, and sinking down gradually, his shots went higher and higher, until his last went straight up in the air.”

IN THE TRENCHES

“Those Indians were plumb crazy. Now, for instance, did you notice that before they fired they raised their arms to heaven? That was devotional.”

“Yes, captain, but they got over their devotional mood after the shooting was over,” remonstrated a cynic. “When I passed over the field after the fight one young warrior who was near to his death asked me to take him over to the medicine-man’s side, that he might die with his knife in the old conjurer’s heart. He had seen that the medicine was bad, and his faith in the ghost shirt had vanished. There was no doubt but that every buck there thought that no bullet could touch him.”

“Well,” said an officer, whose pipe was working into a reflective mood, “there is one thing which I learned, and that is that you can bet that the private soldier in the United States army will fight. He’ll fight from the drop of the hat anywhere and in any place, and he’ll fight till you calltime. I never in my life saw Springfield carbines worked so industriously as at that place. I noticed one young fellow, and his gun seemed to just blaze all the while. Poor chap! he’s mustered out for good.”

I saw the scout who had his nose cut off. He came in to get shaved. His face was covered with strips of court-plaster, and when informed that it would be better for him to forego the pleasure of a shave, he reluctantly consented. He had ridden all day and been in the second day’s fight with his nose held on by a few strips of plaster, and he did not see just why he could not be shaved; but after being talked to earnestly by a half-dozen friends he succumbed.

“What became of the man who did that?” I asked of him.

He tapped his Winchester and said, “Oh, I got him all right!”

I went into the hospital tents and saw the poor fellowslying on the cots, a little pale in the face, and with a drawn look about the mouth and eyes. That is the serious part of soldiering. No excitement, no crowd of cheering comrades, no shots and yells and din of battle. A few watchful doctors and Red Cross stewards with bottles and bandages, and the grim spectre of the universal enemy hovering over all, and ready to dart down on any man on the cots who lay quieter and whose face was more pale than his fellows.

I saw the Red Cross ambulances draw up in line, and watched the wounded being loaded into them. I saw poor Garlington. His blond mustache twitched under the process of moving, and he looked like a man whose mustache wouldn’t twitch unnecessarily. Lieutenant Hawthorne, who was desperately shot in the groin while working the little Hotchkiss cannon, turned his eyes as they moved Garlington from the next cot, and then waited patiently for his own turn.

I was talking with old Captain Capron, who commanded the battery at the fight—a grim old fellow, with a red-lined cape overcoat, and nerve enough for a hundred-ton gun. He said: “When Hawthorne was shot the gun was worked by Corporal Weimert, while Private Hertzog carried Hawthorne from the field and then returned to his gun. The Indians redoubled their fire on the men at the gun, but it seemed only to inspire the corporal to renewed efforts. Oh, my battery was well served,” continued the captain, as he put his hands behind his back and looked far away.

This professional interest in the military process of killing men sometimes rasps a citizen’s nerves. To the captain everything else was a side note of little consequence so long as his guns had been worked to his entire satisfaction. That was the point.

THE ADVANCE GUARD—A MILITARY SACRIFICE

At the mention of the name of Captain Wallace, the Sibley became so quiet that you could hear the stove draw and the wind wail about the little canvas town. It was always “Poor Wallace!” and “He died like a soldier, with his empty six-shooter in his right hand, shot through the body, and with two jagged wounds in his head.”

I accosted a soldier who was leaning on a crutch while he carried a little bundle in his right hand. “You bet I’m glad to get out in the sunlight; that old hospital tent was getting mighty tiresome.”

“Where was I shot?” He pointed to his hip. “Only a flesh wound; this is my third wound. My time is out in a few days; but I’m going to re-enlist, and I hope I’ll get back here before this trouble is over. I want to get square with these Injuns.” You see, there was considerable human nature in this man’s composition.

The ambulance went off down the road, and the burial party came back. The dead were for the time forgotten, and the wounded were left to fight their own battles with stitches and fevers and suppuration. The living toiled in the trenches, or stood out their long term on the pickets, where the moon looked down on the frosty landscape, and the cold wind from the north searched for the crevices in their blankets.

The hacienda San José de Bavicora lies northwest from Chihuahua 225 of the longest miles on the map. The miles run up long hills and dive into rocky cañons; they stretch over never-ending burnt plains, and across the beds of tortuous rivers thick with scorching sand. And there are three ways to make this travel. Some go on foot—which is best, if one has time—like the Tahuramaras; others take it ponyback, after the Mexican manner; and persons with no time and a great deal of money go in a coach. At first thought this last would seem to be the best, but the Guerrero stage has never failed to tip over, and the company make you sign away your natural rights, and almost your immortal soul, before they will allow you to embark. So it is not the best way at all, if I may judge from my own experience. We had a coach which seemed to choose the steepest hill on the route, where it then struck a stone, which heaved the coach, pulled out the king-pin, and what I remember of the occurrence is full of sprains and aches and general gloom. Guerrero, too, is only three-fourths of the way to Bavicora, and you can only go there if Don Gilberto, thepatronof the hacienda—or, if you know him well enough, “Jack”—will take you in the ranch coach.

After bumping over the stones all day for five days, through a blinding dust, we were glad enough when we suddenly came out of the tall timber in the mountainpass and espied the great yellow plain of Bavicora stretching to the blue hills of the Sierra. In an hour’s ride more, through a chill wind, we were at the ranch. We pulled up at the entrance, which was garnished by a bunch of cow-punchers, who regarded us curiously as we pulled our aching bodies and bandaged limbs from the Concord and limped into thepatio.

THE HACIENDA SAN JOSÉ DE BAVICORA

To us was assigned the room of honor, and after shaking ourselves down on a good bed, with mattress and sheeting, we recovered our cheerfulness. A hot toddy, a roaring fireplace, completed the effect. The floor was strewn with bear and wolf skin rugs; it had pictures and draperies on the walls, and in a corner a wash-basin and pitcher—so rare in these parts—was set on a stand, grandly suggestive of the refinements of luxury we had attained to. I do not wish to convey the impression that Mexicans do not wash, because there are brooks enough in Mexico if they want to use them, but wash-basins are the advance-guards of progress, and we had been on the outposts since leaving Chihuahua.

Jack’s man William had been ever-present, and administered to our slightest wish; his cheerful “Good-mo’nin’, gemmen,” as he lit the fire, recalled us to life, and after a rub-down I went out to look at the situation.

Jack’s ranch is a great straggling square of mud walls enclosing twopatios, with adobe corrals and out-buildings, all obviously constructed for the purposes of defence. It was built in 1770 by the Jesuits, and while the English and Dutch were fighting for the possession of the Mohawk Valley, Bavicora was an outpost of civilization, as it is to-day. Locked in a strange language, on parchment stored in vaults in Spain, are the records of this enterprise. In 1840 the good fathers were murdered by the Apaches, the country devasted and deserted, and the cattleand horses hurried to the mountain lairs of the Apache devils. The place lay idle and unreclaimed for years, threatening to crumble back to the dust of which it was made. Near by are curious mounds on the banks of a dryarroyo. The punchers have dug down into these ruins, and found adobe walls, mud plasterings, skeletons, and bits of woven goods. They call them the “Montezumas.” All this was to be changed. In 1882 an American cowboy—which was Jack—accompanied by two companions, penetrated south from Arizona, and as he looked from the mountains over the fair plain of Bavicora, he said, “I will take this.” The Apaches were on every hand; the country was terrorized to the gates of Chihuahua. The stout heart of the pioneer was not disturbed, and he made his word good. By purchase he acquired the plain, and so much more that you could not ride round it in two weeks. He moved in with his hardy punchers, and fixed up Bavicora so it would be habitable. He chased the Indians off his ranch whenever he “cut their sign.” After a while the Mexicanvaquerosfrom below overcame their terror, when they saw the American hold his own with the Apache devils, and by twos and threes and half-dozens they came up to take service, and now there are two hundred who lean on Jack and call himpatron. They work for him and they follow him on the Apache trail, knowing he will never run away, believing in his beneficence and trusting to his courage.

I sat on a mud-bank and worked away at a sketch of the yellow sunlit walls of the mud-ranch, with the great plain running away like the ocean into a violet streak under the blue line of the Peña Blanca. In the rear rises a curious broken formation of hills like millions of ruins of Rhine castles. Thelobos[3]howl bynight, and the Apache is expected to come at any instant. The oldcriadaor serving-woman who makes the beds saw her husband killed at the front door, and every man who goes out of thepatiohas a large assortment of the most improved artillery on his person. Old carts with heavy wooden wheels like millstones stand about. Brown people with big straw hats and gayserapeslean lazily against the gray walls. Little pigs carry on the contest with nature, game-chickens strut, and clumsy puppies tumble over each other in joyful play;burrosstand about sleepily, only indicating life by suggestive movements of their great ears, while at intervals a pony, bearing its lithe rider, steps from the gate, and, breaking into an easy and graceful lope, goes away into the waste of land.

[3]Wolves.

EL PATRON

I rose to go inside, and while I gazed I grew exalted in the impression that here, in the year of 1893, I had rediscovered a Fort Laramie after Mr. Parkman’s well-known description. The foreman, Tom Bailey, was dressed in store clothes, and our room had bedsteads and a wash-basin; otherwise it answered very well. One room was piled high with dried meat, and the great stomachs of oxen filled with tallow; another room is a store full of goods—calicoes, buckskin,riatas, yellow leather shoes, guns, and other quaint plunder adapted to the needs of a people who sit on the ground and live on meat and corn-meal.

“Charlie Jim,” the Chinese cook, has a big room with a stove in it, and he and the stove are a never-ending wonder to all the folks, and the fame of both has gone across the mountains to Sonora and to the south. Charlie is an autocrat in his curious Chinese way, and by the dignity of his position as Mr. Jack’s private cook, and his unknown antecedents, he conjures the Mexicans and damns theTexans, which latter refuse to take him seriously and kill him, as they would a “proper” man. Charlie Jim, in return, entertains ideas of Texans which he secretes, except when they dine with Jack, when he may be heard to mutter, “Cake and pie no good for puncher, make him fat and lazy”; and when he crosses thepatioand they fling a rope over his foot, he becomes livid, and breaks out, “Damn puncher; damn rope; rope man all same horse; damn puncher; no good that way.”

Thepatronhas the state apartment, and no one goes there with his hat on; but the relations with his people are those of a father and children. An old gray man approaches; they touch the left arm with the right—an abbreviated hug; say “Buenos dias, patron!” “Buenos dias, Don Sabino!” and they shake hands. A California saddle stands on a rack by the desk, and the latter is littered with photographs of men in London clothes and women in French dresses, the latter singularly out of character with their surroundings. The oldcriadasquats silently by the fireplace, her head enveloped in her bluerebozo, and deftly rolls her cigarette. She alone, and one white bull-dog, can come and go without restraint.

Theadministrador, which is Mr. Tom Bailey, of Texas, moves about in the discharge of his responsibilities, and they are universal; anything and everything is his work, from the negotiation for the sale of five thousand head of cattle to the “busting” of a bronco which no one else can “crawl.”

The clerk is in the store, with his pink boy’s face, a pencil behind his ear, and a big sombrero, trying to look as though he had lived in these wilds longer than at San Francisco, which he finds an impossible part. He has acquired the language and the disregard of time necessaryto one who would sell a real’s worth of cotton cloth to a Mexican.

Back to Index Next