how much our bold dragoons can swear on proper provocation. The sentimental fair ones who so much admire our shoulder-strapped and be-frogged cavalry officers in a brilliant ball room ought to see and hear them when out on a rough campaign. They are then innocent of "boiled shirts;" their beards become a stubble, and only for the inevitable yellow stripe, which the weather turns muddy in color, on their pantaloons, they could hardly be distinguished from the private soldiers of their respective commands. The same is also true of the infantry officers. In contrast, however, with the professional mule packers, and whackers, the officers were models of the early Christian type of mankind.
We had along a trifle over 1,000 mules, all immensely loaded with ammunition and other supplies. They were unamiable and unattractive animals, awkward, yet "handy with their feet," and vilely discordant. The General, however, knew their value on a campaign, and had great respect for their eccentricities of manner and habit. Notwithstanding, I consider that the average mule is obstinate, and even
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morose, in manner, and filthy, not to say immodest, in habit. But the animal has his fine points also. He is surer, if slower, than the horse, and can live where the latter would surely starve. Ears polite would be immeasurably shocked by the sounds and observations that accompany the starting of a pack train from camp in the early morning. The hybrids are "cinched" or girthed so tight by the packers that they are almost cut in two. Naturally the beasts don't want to move under such circumstances. They therefore stand stock still. This irritates the packers, who swear in a most artistic and perfectly inexhaustible fashion. They welt the animals with their rawhides most unmercifully, and the brutes reply with their heels and the batteries of nature, in a most effective, if somewhat obscene, manner. Suddenly, and generally simultaneously, they dash forward, and matters run more tranquilly during the rest of the day. Such is a part of "the romance of war." The mule-drivers used to have an excellent time of it, and lived far better than the soldiers. The latter were expected to do all the fighting, while the mule-whackers had the better part of the feasting.
Although the country through which Colonel Royall's column moved, along the left bank of the Platte to Fetterman was practically a wilderness, the section between that Fort and Crazy Woman's Fork is not particularly bad; but there are enough "bad lands" here and there to about counterbalance the more fertile portions. The grass ranges along a few small streams in spring time and the early summer are fairly good, but the soil is, as a rule, poor and sandy, and
OR THE CONQUEST OF THE SIOUX
the winter tarries long on the old Bozeman trail, which General Crook's brigade traveled over for several hundred miles. In fact, the whole country had a kind of arid, half-starved look in the beginning of June, 1876, and I fancy it has hardly improved much in appearance since that period. The grass seemed to be exceedingly coarse in most places, and was disfigured, wherever the eye turned, by the omnipresent sage brush and cruel cacti. I wrote at the time, to the paper I represented, that ranchmen who cared little or nothing for the comforts of civilization could raise large herds of cattle in that region, if the Sioux were subdued or friendly, but that for purposes of tillage, the soil was unavailable. My candid judgment was that, during a march of about 300 miles, I had not seen a twenty-acre tract that could approach even the medium agricultural lands of Illinois or Iowa in productive power. I had not seen a single acre that could compare with the prime farming lands of the old States. The wealth of the soil must have been very deep down, for it certainly was not visible on the surface, except in the form of alkaline deposits, which resembled hoar frost. It lacked then, and I suppose it lacks still, several essentials toward making it reasonably habitable: first, water; second, timber; third, climate. In rocks, hills, ants, snakes, weeds and alkali, that portion of Wyoming is rich indeed. If there should happen to be any gold in the heart of the Big Horn mountains, God must have placed it there to make up for the comparative worthlessness of a large portion of the Territory. I observed, also, that it needed neither a professor nor a philosopher to predict that that particular range of country could never
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become a part of that great agricultural Northwest which is justly called the granary of the world; and that its highest destiny was to become a mammoth cattle range. My humble prediction has been fulfilled. Myriads of domestic cattle have taken the place of the picturesque buffalo, and where the red Indian used to ride on his wild forays, the enterprising cowboy now cracks his horse-whip and "rounds up" his herds.
Colonel Royall, at the outset of our march, used to have us on the road at 5 o'clock in the morning, but General Crook, on assuming command, fixed the hour at 6 o'clock for the infantry and at 7:30 o'clock for the cavalry, in order that the horses might have sufficient rest, as he intended to make night marches in pursuit of the hostiles, accompanied by his pack train only, after the campaign had been fully developed.
He detached from Sage creek two companies of the 3d Cavalry, under Captains Meinhold and Vroom, to patrol the country to the westward, and report the presence of fresh Indian trails, if any such existed. The detachment took along four days' rations, and was ordered to rejoin us at old Fort Reno, on the Powder river. On the 30th of May we marched from Sage creek to what is called the South Fork of the Cheyenne river, a puny, muddy-looking rivulet, the rotten banks of which were fringed with cottonwood trees and tangled, rich undergrowth. The water was shockingly bad, and made many of the men quite sick. It was at this point, during the scout of the preceding March, that the Indians shot and killed the chief herder of the
OR THE CONQUEST OF THE SIOUX
expedition, the very first day out from Fort Fetterman. We all felt that we were on hostile and dangerous ground, but we were allowed to sleep in peace. The pickets, however, were doubled, and every precaution against a surprise was taken.
On the 31st of May the weather, which had been rather mild and pleasant for several days, suddenly changed. The thermometer fell to zero, and the wind rose to the proportions of a hurricane. The sky became deeply overcast with ominous-looking clouds, and whirlwinds raised columns of alkaline dust, which scalded our eyes and gave to every object a hazy and filthy appearance. Many of the tents were blown down, and the men shivered around their watchfires, as if it were midwinter. It was a relief to everybody when morning came and "the general" was sounded. We marched on Wind creek—a very poor apology for a stream— about twenty miles northward. Our course lay over a somewhat bare, but undulating, country. About noon the clouds partially lifted, and the sun of the last day of May shone out fitfully to cheer our weary road. We soon gained the summit of an unusually high swell in the prairie, called in frontier parlance "a divide," and beheld, with some degree of joy, to our left and front, distant perhaps one hundred miles, the chilly, white summits of the mighty Big Horn mountains. From this same "divide" we had an exceptionally fine view of that portion of Wyoming which we had marched over. Looking backward, we could see the faint blue outline of Laramie Peak, almost dipping below the horizon. On our right, and almost due east, tho dark group of
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the Black Hills of Dakota could be descried through a fieldglass. On our right front, northeastward, the Pumpkin buttes, four long, somewhat irregular, but mountain-like, formations, several hundred feet in height, arose abruptly from the very bosom of "the bad lands." Those buttes run very nearly north and south, the northernmost being nearly abreast of Fort Reno. But soon the lurking storm came back upon us with renewed fury, and there was an end, for that day at least, of our enjoyment of savage scenery.
Wind creek did not belie its name. A more comfortless bivouac rarely fell to a soldier's lot. Every inch of ground was covered with some species of cacti, each seemingly more full of thorns than its neighbor. The water was simply execrable, the wood scarce and the weather bitterly cold. By order of General Crook, who did not desire to be hampered with too many impediments, we had left our tent stoves at Fort Fetterman, and as the thermometer continued to fall, we began to
