On the Border with Crook by John Gregory Bourke

Author:John Gregory Bourke [Bourke, John Gregory]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781628739022
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XV.

MOVING INTO THE BIG HORN COUNTRY IN WINTER—THE HERD STAMPEDED—A NIGHT ATTACK—“JEFF’S” OOZING COURAGE—THE GRAVE-YARD AT OLD FORT RENO—IN A MONTANA BLIZZARD—THE MERCURY FROZEN IN THE BULB—KILLING BUFFALO—INDIAN GRAVES—HOW CROOK LOOKED WHILE ON THIS CAMPAIGN—FINDING A DEAD INDIAN’S ARM—INDIAN PICTURES.

THE march from Fort Fetterman to old Fort Reno, a distance of ninety miles, led us through a country of which the less said the better; it is suited for grazing and may appeal to the eyes of a cow-boy, but for the ordinary observer, especially during the winter season, it presents nothing to charm any sense; the landscape is monotonous and uninviting, and the vision is bounded by swell after swell of rolling prairie, yellow with a thick growth of winter-killed buffalo or bunch grass, with a liberal sprinkling of that most uninteresting of all vegetation—the sage-brush. The water is uniformly and consistently bad—being both brackish and alkaline, and when it freezes into ice the ice is nearly always rotten and dangerous, for a passage at least by mounted troops or wagons. Wood is not to be had for the first fifty miles, and has to be carried along in wagons for commands of any size. Across this charming expanse the wind howled and did its best to freeze us all to death, but we were too well prepared.

The first night out from Fetterman the presence of hostile Indians was indicated by the wounding of our herder, shot in the lungs, and by the stampeding of our herd of cattle—forty-five head—which were not, however, run off by the attacking party, but headed for the post and could not be turned and brought back. There was very little to record of this part of the march: a night attack or two, the firing by our pickets at anything and everything which looked like a man, the killing of several buffaloes by the guides in front—old bulls which would pull all the teeth out of one’s head were they to be chewed; better success with antelope, whose meat was tender and palatable; the sight of a column of dust in the remote distance, occasioned, probably, by the movement of an Indian village, and the flashing of looking-glass signals by hostiles on our right flank, made the sum total of events worthy of insertion in the journals kept at the time. Lodge-pole trails and pony tracks increased in numbers, and a signal smoke curled upwards from one of the distant buttes in our front. On our left, the snow-clad masses of the “Big Horn” range rose slowly above the horizon, and on the right the sullen, inhospitable outline of the “Pumpkin Buttes.” General Crook ordered that the greatest care should be taken in the manner of posting sentinels, and in enjoining vigilance upon them; he directed that no attempt should be made to catch any of the small parties of the enemy’s videttes, which began to show themselves and to retreat when followed; he explained that all they wanted was to entice

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