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Among our Crows were said to be some very distinguished warriors; one of these pointed out to me had performed during the preceding winter the daring feat of stealing in alone upon a Sioux village and getting a fine pony, which he tied loosely to a stake outside; then he crept back, lifted up the flap of one of the lodges, and called gently to the sleepers, who, unsuspecting, answered the grunt, which awakened them, and thus betrayed just where the men were lying; the Crow took aim coolly and blew the head off of one of the Sioux, slipped down through the village, untied and mounted his pony, and was away like the wind before the astonished enemy could tell from the screaming and jabbering squaws what was the matter.

All through the next day, June 15, 1876, camp was a beehive of busy preparation. Colonel Chambers had succeeded in finding one hundred and seventy-five infantrymen who could ride, or were anxious to try, so as to see the whole trip through in proper shape. These were mounted upon mules from the wagon and pack trains, and the first hour's experience with the reluctant Rosinantes equalled the best exhibition ever given by Barnum. Tom Moore organized a small detachment of packers who had had any amount of experience; two of them-Young and Delaney-had been with the English in India, in the wars with the Sikhs and Rohillas, and knew as much as most people do about campaigning and all its hardships and dangers. The medical staff was kept busy examining men unfit to go to the front, but it was remarkable that the men ordered to remain behind did so under protest. The wagons were parked in a great corral, itself a sort of fortification against which the Sioux would not heedlessly rush. Within this corral racks made of willow branches supported loads of wild meat, drying in the sun: deer and antelope venison, buffalo, elk, and grizzly-bear meat, the last two killed by a hunting party from the pack-train the previous day.

The preparations which our savage allies were making were no less noticeable in both Snake and Crow camps could be seen squads of young warriors looking after their rifles, which, by the way, among the Shoshones, I forgot to mention, were of the latest model-calibre .45-and kept with scrupulous care in regular gun-racks. Some were sharpening lances or adorning them with feathers and paint; others were making "coup" sticks, which are long willow branches about twelve feet from end to end;

stripped of leaves and bark, and having each some distinctive mark, in the way of feathers, bells, fur, paint, or bright-colored cloth or flannel. These serve a singular purpose: the great object of the Shoshones, Crows, Cheyennes, and Dakotas in making war is to set the enemy afoot. This done, his destruction is rendered more easy if not more certain. Ponies are also the wealth of the conquerors; hence, in dividing the spoil, each man claims the animals first struck by his "coup" stick.

With the Snakes were three white men-Cosgrove, Yarnell, and Eckles-all Texans; and one French-Canadian half-breed, named Luisant. Cosgrove, the leading spirit, was, during the Rebellion, a captain in the 32d Texas Cavalry, C. S. A., and showed he had not forgotten the lessons of the war by the appearance of discipline and good order evinced by his command, who, in this respect, were somewhat ahead of the Crows. We were informed that on the march over from Wind River, the Snakes, during one afternoon, killed one hundred and seventyfive buffaloes on the eastern slope of the Owl Creek Mountains. In the early hours of the afternoon the Crows had a foot-race, for twenty cartridges a side; the running was quite good for the distance of one hundred and fifty yards.

At sunset we buried Private Nelson, who had died the previous night. The funeral cortege was decidedly imposing, because, as on all former occasions of the same nature, all officers and men not engaged on other duty made it a point to be present at the grave of every dead comrade; the noise of the parting volleys brought our savages up on a gallop, persuaded that the Sioux were making a demonstration against some part of our lines; they dashed up to the side of the grave, and there they sat motionless upon their ponies, feathers nodding in the breeze, and lances gleaming in the sun. Some of them wore as many as four rings in each ear, the entire cartilage being perforated from apex to base.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE COLUMN IN MOTION-RUNNING INTO A GREAT HERD OF BUFFALOES-THE SIGNAL CRY OF THE SCOUTS-THE FIGHT ON THE ROSEBUD-HOW THE KILLED WERE BURIED-SCALP DANCE-BUTCHERING A CHEYENNE-LIEUTENANT SCHUYLER ARRIVES SENDING BACK THE WOUNDED.

O

N the 16th of June, by five o'clock in the morning, our whole command had broken camp and was on its way westward; we crossed Tongue River, finding a swift stream, rather muddy from recent rains, with a current twenty-five yards wide, and four feet deep; the bottom of hard-pan, but the banks on one side muddy and slippery.

The valley, as we saw it from the bluffs amid which we marched, presented a most beautiful appearance-green with juicy grasses, and dark with the foliage of cottonwood and willow. Its sinuosities encircled many park-like areas of meadow, bounded on the land side by bluffs of drift. The Indians at first marched on the flank, but soon passed the column and took the lead, the "medicine men" in front; one of the head "medicine men the Crows kept up a piteous chant, reciting the cruelties of their enemies and stimulating the young men to deeds of martial valor. In every possible way these savages reminded me of the descriptions I had read of the Bedouins.

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Our course turned gradually to the northwest, and led us across several of the tributaries of the Tongue, or "Deje-ajie" as the Crows called it, each of these of good dimensions, and carrying the unusual flow due to the rapid melting of snow in the higher elevations. The fine grass seen close to the Tongue disappeared, and the country was rather more barren, with many prairiedog villages. The soil was made up of sandstones, with a great amount of both clay and lime, shales and lignite, the latter burnt out. Some of the sandstone had been filled with pyrites, which had decomposed and left it in a vesicular state. There were a

great many scrub pines in the recesses of the bluffs. The cause for the sudden disappearance of the grass was soon apparent : the scouts ran in upon a herd of buffaloes whose cast-off bulls had been the principal factor in our meat supply for more than a week; the trails ran in every direction, and the grass had been nipped off more closely than if cut by a scythe. There was much more cactus than we had seen for some time, and a reappearance of the sage-brush common nearer to Fort Fetterman.

In the afternoon, messengers from our extreme advance came as fast as ponies would carry them, with the information that we were upon the trail of a very great village of the enemy. The cavalry dismounted and unsaddled, seeking the shelter of all the ravines to await the results of the examination to be made by a picked detail from the Crows and Shoshones. The remaining Indians joined in a wild, strange war-dance, the younger warriors becoming almost frenzied before the exercises terminated. The young men who had been sent out to spy the land rejoined us on a full run; from the tops of the hills they yelled like wolves, the conventional signal among the plains tribes that the enemy has been sighted. Excitement, among the Indians at least, was at fever heat; many of the younger members of the party re-echoed the ululation of the incoming scouts; many others spurred out to meet them and escort them in with becoming honors. The old chiefs held their bridles while they dismounted, and the less prominent warriors deferentially formed in a circle to listen to their narrative. It did not convey much information to my mind, unaccustomed to the indications so familiar to them. It simply amounted to this, that the buffaloes were in very large herds directly ahead of us, and were running away from a Sioux hunting party.

Knowing the unfaltering accuracy of an Indian's judgment in matters of this kind, General Crook told the chiefs to arrange their plan of march according to their own ideas. On occasions like this, as I was told by our scouts and others, the young men of the Assiniboines and Northern Sioux were required to hold in each hand a piece of buffalo chip as a sign that they were telling the truth; nothing of that kind occurred on the occasion in question. While the above was going on, the Indians were charging about on their hardy little ponies, to put them out of breath, so that, when they regained their wind, they would not

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fail to sustain a whole day's battle. A little herb is carried along, to be given to the ponies in such emergencies, but what virtues are attributed to this medicine I was unable to ascertain. Much solemnity is attached to the medicine arrows of the "medicine men," who seem to possess the power of arbitrarily stopping a march at almost any moment. As I kept with them, I had opportunity to observe all that they did, except when every one was directed to keep well to the rear, as happened upon approaching a tree-juniper or cedar-in the fork of whose lower branches there was a buffalo head, before which the principal "medicine man" and his assistant halted and smoked from their long pipes. Noon had passed, and the march was resumed to gain the Rosebud, one of the tributaries of the Yellowstone, marking the ultimate western limit of our campaign during the previous winter. We moved along over an elevated, undulating, grassy tableland. Without possessing any very marked beauty, there was a certain picturesqueness in the country which was really pleasing. Every few rods a petty rivulet coursed down the hill-sides to pay its tribute to the Tongue; there was no timber, except an occasional small cottonwood or willow, to be seen along the banks of these little water-courses, but wild roses by the thousand laid their delicate beauties at our feet; a species of phlox, daintily blue in tint, was there also in great profusion, while in the bushes multitudes of joyous-voiced singing-birds piped their welcome as the troops filed by. Yet this lovely country was abandoned to the domination of the thriftless savage, the buffalo, and the rattlesnake; we could see the last-named winding along through the tall grass, rattling defiance as they sneaked away. Buffalo spotted the landscape in every direction, in squads of ten and twelve and "bunches" of sixty and seventy. These were not old bulls banished from the society of their mates, to be attacked and devoured by coyotes, but fine fat cows with calves ambling close behind them. One young bull calf trotted down close to the column, his eyes beaming with curiosity and wonder. He was allowed to approach within a few feet, when our prosaic Crow guides took his life as the penalty of his temerity. Thirty buffaloes were killed that afternoon, and the choice pieceshump, tenderloin, tongue, heart, and rib steaks-packed upon our horses. The flesh was roasted in the ashes, a pinch of salt sprinkled over it, and a very savory and juicy addition made to