Frederic Remington

The train bearing the Cheyenne scout corps pulled into Rapid City somewhat late. It is possible you may think that it was a train of Pullman palace cars, but you would be mistaken, for it was a freight train, with the horses in tight box-cars, the bacon and Chis-chis-chash[1] on flat gravel cars, and Lieutenants Casey and Getty in the caboose. Evidently the element of haste was woven into this movement. We were glad to meet again. Expansive smiles lit up the brown features of the Indian scouts as they recognized me. Old Wolf-Voice came around in his large, patronizing way and said, “How?—what you do out here?” Wolf-Voice was a magnificent type of the Indian, with a grand face, a tremendous physique, and enough self-containment for a High-Church bishop. High-Walking nudged Stump-Horn and whispered in his ear, and they both smiled as they looked at me. Lieutenant Casey walked out in the road and talked with General Miles, who sat on his beautiful sorrel horse, while two scouts and a young “horse-pusher”[2] from St. Louis helped me to load one strawberry-roan horse, branded “52” on the nigh front foot, into a box-car with a scrawny lot of little ponies, who showed the hard scouting of the last month in their lank quarters.

[1] The name the Cheyennes apply to themselves.

[2] Boy who travels with horses on the cars.

The quartermaster came down and asked Lieutenant Casey for a memorandum of his outfit, which was “70 horses, 49 Indian scouts, 1 interpreter, 2 white officers, 1000 pounds of bacon, so many crackers, 2000 pounds forage, 5 Sibley tents, and 1 citizen,” all of which the quartermaster put down in a little book. You are not allowed by United States quartermasters to have an exaggerated estimate of your own importance. Bacon and forage and citizens all go down in the same column, with the only distinction that the bacon and forage outnumber you.

We were pulled down the road a few miles to the town of Hermoso, and there, in the moonlight, the baggage was unloaded and the wild little ponies frightened out of the cars, down a chute, into the stock corrals. The Sibleys were pitched, and a crowd of curious citizens, who came down to feast their eyes on the Chis-chis-chash, were dissipated when a rather frugal dinner was prepared. This was Christmas night, and rather a cheerless one, since, in the haste of departure, the Sibley stoves had been forgotten. We never had stoves again until the gallant Leavenworth battalion came to the rescue with their surplus, and in the cold, frosty nights in the foot-hills there can be no personal happiness where there are no stoves. We brewed a little mess of hot stuff in a soldier’s tin cup, and, in the words of Private Mulvaney, we drank to the occasion, “three fingers—standing up!”

The good that comes in the ill wind where stoves are lacking is that you can get men up in the morning. Sun-worship must have originated in circumstances of this kind. The feeling of thankfulness at the sight of the golden rays permeates your soul, and your very bones are made glad.

A few ounces of bacon, some of those accursed crackers which are made to withstand fire, water, and weevil, a quart of coffee blacker than evil, then down come the Sibleys, the blankets are rolled and the saddles adjusted, and bidding adios to the First Infantry (which came in during the night), we trot off down the road.

These, then, are the Cheyenne scouts. Well, I am glad I know the fact, but I never can reconcile the trim-looking scout corps of Keogh with these strange-looking objects. Erstwhile their ponies were fat, and cavorted around when falling in ranks; now they paddle along in the humblest kind of a business-like jog-trot. The new overcoats of the corps metamorphose the scouts into something between Russian Cossacks and Black Crooks. Saddle pockets bulge out, and a thousand and one little alterations in accoutrement grow up in the field which are frowned down in garrison. The men have scouted hard for a month, and have lost two nights’ sleep, so at the halts for the wagons they lop down in the dust of the road, and sleep, while the little ponies stand over them, ears down, heads hanging, eyes shut, and one hind foot drawn up on its toe. Nothing can look so dejected as a pony, and doubtless few things have more reason to feel so. A short march of twenty-five miles passes us through the Seventeenth Infantry camp under Colonel Offley, and down to the Cheyenne River, where we camp for the night. There is another corps of Cheyenne scouts somewhere here on the river, under Lieutenant L. H. Struthers, of the First Infantry, and we expect to join them. On the other side of the Cheyenne rise the tangled masses of the famous Bad Lands—seamed and serrated, gray here, the golden sunset flash[25]
[26]
[27]ing there, with dark recesses giving back a frightful gloom—a place for stratagem and murder, with nothing to witness its mysteries but the cold blue winter sky. Yet we are going there. It is full of savage Sioux. The sun goes down. I am glad to cease thinking about it.

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—with ki-yis of 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 manoeuvres 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 smilingly said, “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 a coulÉe, 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 know [31]
[32]
[33]these 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.

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 of Casey’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 and [35]
[36]
[37]the 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.

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 confined himself 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 two [39]
[40]
[41]beeves. We see the bright blaze of the six-shooters, the steers tumble, and hunger is no longer one of our woes.

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 thrashing around 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 water before 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 the coulÉe, 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:

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 some not 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 his coup, 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 to coup!

“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.