An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill Part 29

These maneuvers I witnessed from my hill with considerable amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 ent.i.tled 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 a.s.sume 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 quant.i.ties 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 steamer _Far West_ down 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 the _Far West_ was 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 gra.s.s, 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.

The _Far West_ was 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 skirmis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sing 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 carca.s.ses 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 reenforcements 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 hards.h.i.+ps, 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 pa.s.sage on the _Far 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 embarra.s.sing, for the general could not go to any part of the Garden without four or five of the braves silently d.o.g.g.i.ng 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 lick.u.m Injun chiefs. Him biggest White Chief. Heap lik.u.m." 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.