An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill Part 30

Crook was a man who lived and fought without any ostentation, but who had high courage and used rare judgment. The fact that he had command of the forces in the West had much to do with their successes in subduing the hostile red man. Indeed, had not our army taught the Indians that it was never safe, and usually extremely dangerous, to go on the warpath against the Big White Chief, organizations might have been formed which would have played sad havoc with our growing Western civilization.

I am and always have been a friend of the Indian. I have always sympathized with him in his struggle to hold the country that was his by right of birth.

But I have always held that in such a country as America the march of civilization was inevitable, and that sooner or later the men who lived in roving tribes, making no real use of the resources of the country, would be compelled to give way before the men who tilled the soil and used the lands as the Creator intended they should be used.

In my dealings with the Indians we always understood each other. In a fight we did our best to kill each other. In times of peace we were friends. I could always do more with the Indians than most white men, and I think my success in getting so many of them to travel with my organization was because I understood them and they understood me.

Shrewd as were the generals who conducted the fight against the Indians, I believe they could have done little without the services of the men who all over the West served them in the capacity of scouts.

The adventures of small scouting parties were at times even more thrilling than the battles between the Indians and the troops.

Among the ablest of the scouts I worked with in the West were Frank Grouard and Baptiste Pourier. At one time in his childhood Grouard was to all intents and purposes a Sioux Indian. He lived with the tribe, hunted and fought with them, and wore the breech-clout as his only summer garment.

He met some hunters and trappers while living this life. Their language recalled his childhood, and he presently deserted his red-skinned friends and came back to his own race.

His knowledge of the tongues of the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Crow Indians and his marvelous proficiency in the universal sign language made him an extremely desirable acquisition to the service.

Grouard and "Big Bat" (Baptiste Pourier) were the two scouts that guided Lieutenant Sibley, a young officer of experience and ability, on a scout with about thirty officers and John Finnerty of the Chicago _Times_, a newspaper man who was known all over the West.

At eight o'clock at night they left their halting-place, Big Goose Creek, and in the silent moonlight made a phantom promenade toward the Little Big Horn.

Presently they made out the presence of a war party ahead of them, and one of the scouts of this outfit began riding around in a circle, which meant that the enemy had been discovered.

There were too many Indians to fight in the open, so Grouard led the soldiers to a deep thicket where there were plenty of logs and fallen timber out of which to make breastworks.

The Indians repeatedly circled around them and often charged, but the white men, facing a ma.s.sacre like that of Custer's men, steadily held them at bay by accurate shooting.

Soon red reenforcements began to arrive. The Indians, feeling that they had now a sufficient advantage, attempted another charge, as the result of which they lost White Antelope, one of the bravest of their chiefs.

This dampened their ardor, but they kept up an incessant firing that rattled against the log breastworks like hailstones.

Fearing that the Indians would soon start a fire and burn them out, Sibley ordered a retreat. The two scouts were left behind to keep up a desultory fire after night had fallen, in order to make the Indians think the party was still in its breastworks. Then the other men in single file struggled up the precipitous sides of the mountain above them, marching, stumbling, climbing, and falling according to the character of the ground they pa.s.sed over.

The men left behind finally followed on. The temperature fell below zero, and the night was one of suffering and horror. At last they gained a point in the mountains about twenty-five miles distant from Crook's command.

Halting in a sheltered cave, they got a little sleep and started out just in time to escape observation by a large war-party which was scouting in their direction.

At night the jaded party, more dead than alive, forded Tongue River up to their armpits. Two were so exhausted that it was not considered advisable to permit them to plunge into the icy stream, and they were left on the bank till help could be sent to them.

Those that got across dragged themselves over the trail to Crook's camp. The rocks had broken their boots, and with bleeding feet and many a bullet wound they managed to get within sight of the camp, where two men of the Second Cavalry found them and brought them in.

Sibley's men threw themselves on the ground, too exhausted to go another step. Hot food was brought them, and they soon were strong enough to go to Camp Cloud Peak, to receive the hospitality and sympathy of their comrades. The two men who had been left behind were brought in and cared for.

This expedition was one of the most perilous in the history of the Plains, and the fact that there were any survivors is due to the skill, coolness, and courage of the two scouts, Grouard and Pourier.

CHAPTER X

My work on the Plains brought me many friends, among them being some of the truest and staunchest that any man ever had. You who live your lives in cities or among peaceful ways cannot always tell whether your friends are the kind who would go through fire for you. But on the Plains one's friends have an opportunity to prove their mettle. And I found out that most of mine would as cheerfully risk their lives for me as they would give me a light for my pipe when I asked it.

Such a friend was old "Buffalo Chips," who certainly deserves a place in these memoirs of mine.

One morning while I was sitting on my porch at North Platte, playing with my children, I saw a man limping on crutches from the direction of the Post hospital. He was a middle-aged man, but had long, flowing white hair, and the most deeply-pitted face I have ever beheld.

Noticing that he seemed confused and in trouble, I sent the children out to bring him to me. He came up haltingly, and in response to my questioning told me that he had been rejected by the hospital because he had been a Confederate soldier and it was against their rules to accept any but Union veterans.

I turned the stranger over to my sister, who prepared a meal for him while I went over to the adjutant's office to see what could be done. I met General Emory in the adjutant's office, and on my promise to pay the ex-Confederate's bills, he gave me an order admitting him to the hospital. Soon my new protege, who said his name was Jim White, was duly installed, and receiving the treatment of which he stood in sore need.

In a few weeks he had nearly recovered from the wound in his leg which had necessitated the use of his crutches. Every day he came to my house to play with the children and to care for my horses, a service for which he gruffly refused to accept any pay.

Now and then he would borrow one of my rifles for a little practice. I soon discovered that he was a splendid shot, as well as an unusually fine horseman. My surprise at these accomplishments was somewhat lessened when he told me that he had spent his four years' war service as one of General J.E.B. Stuart's scouts. Stuart had no other kind of men in his command.

For years, wherever I went, no matter how dangerous the errand, my new friend went along. The first time he followed me I still remember vividly. I had left the Post on a five days' scout, and was particularly anxious that no one should know the direction I was to take.

When I was four or five miles from the Post I looked back and saw a solitary horseman riding in my direction about a mile in my rear. When I stopped he stopped. I rode on for a little way and looked around again. He was exactly the same distance behind me, and pulled his horse up when I halted. This maneuver I repeated several times, always with the same result. Considerably disquieted by this mysterious pursuit, I decided to discover the reason for it. I whipped up my horse and when I had put a sandhill between myself and the man behind I made a quick detour through a ravine, and came up in his rear. Then I boldly rode up till I came abreast of him.

He swung around when he heard me coming, and blushed like a girl when he saw how I had tricked him.

"Look here, White," I demanded, "what the devil are you following me in this way for?"

"Mrs. Cody said I could follow you if I wanted to," he said, "and, well, I just followed you, that's all."

That was all he would say. But I knew that he had come along to keep me from getting hurt if I was attacked, and would rather die than admit his real reason. So I told him to come along, and come along he did.

There was no need for his services on that occasion, but a little later he put me in debt to him for my life. He and I rode together into a border town, where there were a few gentlemen in the horse-stealing business who had reason to wish me moved along to some other sphere. I left White to look after the horses as we reached the town, and went into a hotel to get a nip, for which I felt a very great need. White noticed a couple of rough-looking chaps behind the barn as he put the horses away and quietly slipped to a window where he could overhear their conversation.

"We'll go in while he is taking a drink," one of them was saying, "and shoot him from behind. He'll never have a chance."

Without a word to me, White hurried into the hotel and got behind the door. Presently the two men entered, both with drawn revolvers. But before they could raise them White covered them with his own weapon and commanded them sternly to throw up their hands, an order with which they instantly complied after one look at his face.

I wheeled at the order, and recognized his two captives as the men I was looking for, a pair of horse-thieves and murderers whom I had been sent to apprehend. My revolvers were put into instant requisition, and I kept them covered while White removed the guns with which they had expected to put me out of their way.

With White's help I conducted these gentlemen forty miles back to the sheriff's office, and they walked every step of the way. Each of them got ten years in the penitentiary as soon as they could be tried. They either forgave me or forgot me when they got out, for I never heard of either of them again.

In the campaign of 1876 I secured employment for White as a scout. He was with me when Terry and Crook's commands separated on the Yellowstone. By this time he had come to copy my gait, my dress, my speech, and even my fas.h.i.+on of wearing my hair down on my shoulders, though mine at that time was brown, and his was white as the driven snow.

We were making a raid on an Indian village, which was peopled with very lively and very belligerent savages. I had given White an old red-lined coat, one which I had worn conspicuously in a number of battles, and which the Indians had marked as a special target on that account.

A party of Indians had been driven from among the lodges into a narrow gorge, and some of the soldiers, among them Captain Charles King, had gone after them. As they were proceeding cautiously, keeping tinder cover as much as possible, King observed White creeping along the opposite bluff, rifle in hand, looking for a chance at the savages huddled below, and hoping to distract their fire so they would do as little damage as possible to the soldiers who were closing in on them.

White crawled along on all-fours till he reached a stunted tree on the brim of the ravine. There he halted, brought his rifle to his shoulder in readiness to aim and raised himself slowly to his feet. He was about to fire, when one of the Indians in the hole below spotted the red-lined coat. There was a crack, a puff of smoke, and White toppled over, with a bullet through his heart. The coat had caught the attention of the savages, and thus I had been the innocent means of my friend's death; for, with the soldiers pressing them so hard, it is not likely that any of the warriors would have wasted a shot had they not thought they were getting Pa-ho-has-ka. For a long time the Indians believed that I would be a menace to them no more. But they discovered their mistake later, and I sent a good many of them to the Happy Hunting-Grounds as a sort of tribute to my friend.

Poor old White! A more faithful man never took a trail, nor a braver.

He was a credit to me, and to the name which General Sheridan had first given him in derision, but which afterward became an honor, the name of "Buffalo Chips."