Part 18 (2/2)
The three self-appointed raiders returned to camp, Wallace and the Indian scout with feelings of unmixed delight and thanksgiving over their escape, Al with several new problems to perplex him. He had been greatly relieved by Te-o-kun-ko's statements concerning Tommy's devotion to the memory of his family, which showed that the little boy's strength of affection had prevailed over what must have been a very great liking for the life of the Indians. But, though the persistence of this affection on Tommy's part had finally induced his captor to give him his liberty, Al could by no means feel sure that such liberty might not be more dangerous for his brother than captivity had been. Had he been surrendered to the army, or at an army post, Al would have felt no anxiety, for he would have known that the boy would receive the best of care and be sent to his home safe and as promptly as possible. But what would such a mere child do among the hardened trappers and frontiersmen of Fort La Framboise, which Al knew was nothing more than a small trading-post of La Barge, Harkness and Company, fur traders of St.
Louis? Tommy could have no idea of where his relatives were now and would be more likely to try to reach Minnesota than any other place.
Moreover, if started off by the traders in that direction or even on a steamboat toward St. Louis, he knew nothing of travelling and might easily go astray or fall into dangerous company.
Al lay awake for a long time that night thinking over these problems and decided that next day he would talk them over with General Sully and ask his advice. But at daylight the movement of the army into column brought on an immediate renewal of the enemy's resistance; and for many hours, until the middle of the afternoon, the battle continued as hotly contested as on the previous day. Neither the General nor Al himself had a moment to think of anything except the gigantic task of repelling the Indian attacks.
Just before noon, Wallace was riding in from the left flank, where he had delivered a message to Major Brackett, when he was struck in the left arm, between shoulder and elbow, by a stray bullet. The wound soon became very painful and Wallace was obliged to dismount and go into an ambulance, where a surgeon extracted the bullet and made him as comfortable as possible. But Al, much as he was grieved over his friend's misfortune, could barely find time to spend a moment with him before hurrying back to his own pressing duties.
About mid-afternoon the country began to grow more level and the marching easier. The Indians, apparently discouraged, gradually ceased their attacks and at length the advance guard, mounting a rise from which a wide extent of country was visible in front, saw the last of the hostile army, several miles away to the southward, disappearing in a cloud of dust.
Hearty cheers arose from the whole army as the good news spread, for it was clear the final victory was won. A short halt was ordered and while it lasted the two bands with the Minnesota Brigade, one silver and the other bra.s.s, vied with each other in playing triumphant and patriotic airs, to the great delight of the men, who fully believed that the worst of their hards.h.i.+ps were now over. But, unfortunately, experiences were yet in store for them not less distressing than those they had already pa.s.sed through, though somewhat different in character.
CHAPTER XV
IN THE WAKE OF THE GRa.s.sHOPPERS
After the halt, the march was resumed, as the General wished to push on to the Yellowstone as fast as possible and three or four hours of daylight could not be wasted lying in camp. The trains were now able to straighten out and move with less confusion and delay; and the troops, though still retaining their defensive formation, ready to repel any sudden attack, found it possible to draw in the flanks and advance more rapidly. Presently, as all the different elements of the army settled into a steady, methodical march, Al found a chance to speak to General Sully of the news he had heard of Tommy, so adventurously gained and so surprising in itself. The General listened with lively interest.
”Well,” said he, when Al had concluded his account of his encounter with Te-o-kun-ko, ”you certainly had a very unusual experience. This Te-o-kun-ko must be a remarkable Indian to have let you go, once he had you. Almost any Indian, particularly a Sioux, would have shot all of you at such a time, or else have tied you to stakes and tortured you. I wish he could be induced to come in. Such a man could be made very useful in bringing the rest of the nation to peace. As for your brother, a.s.suming that this Indian has given you a straight story, it is hard to tell whether he may still be at Fort La Framboise or not. You know that trading post is only a short distance above Fort Sully and the traders may have taken him down and turned him over to Colonel Bartlett. Again, they may have placed him on some downward bound boat for St. Louis. But my guess would be that he is still at Fort La Framboise and that the traders are waiting for the return of my expedition so that the Minnesota troops can take him with them to Fort Ridgely.”
”Then what do you think I had better do, General Sully?” inquired Al.
His commander meditated a moment. ”Well, my boy,” he began, ”I am not anxious that you should leave me; I have enjoyed having you with us through this expedition, and I don't exaggerate when I say that you have made yourself as useful as any of my regular staff officers, and have been as courageous in conduct and as uncomplaining under hards.h.i.+ps as any soldier could be,--probably more courageous than necessary, though that is never a condemnable fault. But my judgment is that, since you are in this country primarily to find your brother, your proper course will be to get to Fort La Framboise as soon as possible. When we reach the Yellowstone you will probably be able to go on ahead of the army to Fort Union, on the Missouri, where, no doubt, you can soon catch a boat downward bound from Fort Benton which will take you to Fort La Framboise in a few days.”
Al was deeply gratified by his commander's words of praise, the more so since General Sully was not a man given to flattery nor to the bestowal of undue praise upon his subordinates. He very much disliked the idea of leaving the army and his many friends in it before the conclusion of the campaign, but he felt that the General was right. Indeed, it had been his opinion ever since his conversation with Te-o-kun-ko that he ought to get to Fort La Framboise as soon as he could, but he had also felt that he owed it to General Sully to await the latter's opinion and be governed by it, and he was glad to find that this opinion agreed with his own.
As the army advanced westward, the country became more sterile rather than less so. It was evident that there had been no rain in this region for a long time and whatever gra.s.s had ever grown there had, moreover, been eaten off right down to the roots by a plague of gra.s.shoppers.
These insects, moving across the country in vast mult.i.tudes, often caused widespread devastation all over the West in early days, and many a pioneer farmer saw his entire crop of corn, small grain, and vegetables utterly destroyed in a single day by the ravenous pests while he stood by, helpless to protect or save the fruits of his year of hard work. In the case of the Northwestern Indian Expedition, the visitation of the gra.s.shoppers, together with lack of water, entailed untold suffering upon the thousands of animals with the column. Hardly any corn or grain was left; and the poor beasts, enfeebled by their weeks of hard, hot marching, generally with insufficient food and water, were becoming mere skeletons, hardly able to keep moving.
The night of August 9, which had witnessed the end of the battle of the Little Missouri, as the fight in the Bad Lands came to be called, found the army camping beside the bed of a dry creek; and each man lay down to sleep after a supper consisting of one cracker and a bit of bacon, with nothing to drink, while the horses had neither food nor water. The two following days were more like nightmares than realities. Most of the mules and oxen of the two wagon trains contrived to stagger along somehow. But one by one the worn-out cavalry horses began to succ.u.mb.
When they could keep up no longer, their riders would shoot them to end their sufferings; and all along the dreary miles of white, dusty alkali plains, sprinkled here and there with spa.r.s.e growths of sage brush or cactus, the wake of the army was dotted with the bodies of scores of the poor, dumb victims of starvation and thirst. By this time nearly all the men were walking and leading their horses, in order to save the latter as much as possible. So pa.s.sed the first heart-sickening day after the close of the Indian attacks; and as darkness fell at the end of a torturing march of thirty-two miles, the troops sunk down upon the brink of a lake of clear, sparkling water, so bitter with alkali that neither man nor beast could do more than taste it and then feast his aching eyes on its delusive, poisonous beauty. The victorious army, which had conquered all its human foes, seemed like to perish miserably under the rigors of inhospitable Nature.
Despite his own sufferings, Al had one satisfaction, which was that Cottontail kept up much better than most of the horses of the expedition. The fact that he was a tough, st.u.r.dy little animal by nature had something to do with his good condition; yet Al knew that the care he had given the horse throughout the campaign had been chiefly responsible for bringing him into the present crisis in a state to withstand its hards.h.i.+ps; for he had never failed to supply Cottontail with water and gra.s.s whenever opportunity offered, even at the cost of his own rest or comfort. Yet even Cottontail had become so desperate with thirst by the second night of the desert march that he pawed and neighed and stamped the whole night through. As every other animal was doing the same thing, the camp was in an uproar of misery, and few of the men could sleep for sympathy with their suffering four-footed comrades.
Dawn came at last, after hours of darkness which seemed long as eternity, and the suffering caravan crept on. The guides had a.s.sured General Sully that he could reach the Yellowstone that day, and about four o'clock in the afternoon the advance guard suddenly broke into confusion, and those behind them saw the men toss their hats in the air, while the sound of cheers and carbine shots came back to their ears. The Yellowstone was in sight, though still several miles off, and across the wide, flat valley could be seen the groves of green cottonwoods along its banks with the strong, swift current of the river beyond, s.h.i.+ning bright and beckoning in the sunlight. With an inrush of new vitality the whole column surged forward, and the drivers of the mule teams were hardly able to restrain the poor animals as they struggled to run forward into the stream. The General and his officers, declining, as they always did, to accept any advantage over the men afforded by their position, held back their own horses and allowed the trains and the troops to reach the river first. Al, mounting Cottontail for the first time in two days, rode back to the ambulance in which Wallace lay, and secured his canteen, as well as those of the driver and of two other wounded men who were riding with him. Hurrying, then, to the river he threw Cottontail's reins over his head and left him to drink, filled the canteens, and ran back to meet the ambulance. Then, after Wallace had drunk, he took from the latter's canteen his own first deep swallow of the cool, life-restoring water.
There was no more marching for that day. Men and animals had indulged too freely in the luxury of water to be fit for any more immediate exertion. The army went into camp and every one took a bath, for the first time in weeks, and washed out his clothing, soiled and stiffened with perspiration and dirt. But the arrival at the river had not relieved the situation with regard to forage, for the gra.s.shoppers had cleaned off the gra.s.s right up to the banks of the Yellowstone. The soldiers, however, went in crowds into the cottonwood groves where they cut armfuls of branches and leaves and brought to their horses, who ate ravenously of these not unpalatable subst.i.tutes for gra.s.s. The expected steamboats were not in sight, but the cannon soon began to boom at intervals, signalling the army's arrival to the steamers, if the latter were anywhere near.
And then, just before sunset, a heavy column of smoke appeared, rising above the tree tops up river. It could come from nothing but steamboats.
”They evidently expected us to strike the river farther up,” said General Sully, as he and a number of other officers a.s.sembled on the bank, anxiously watching the bend above for the first sight of the boats. ”It's fortunate they were within sound of the guns or I should have had to send scouts to look for them.”
In a few moments the bow of the first steamer emerged from behind the timber point, and then appeared her tall smoke stacks, with the little pilot-house between them, towering above the dazzling white woodwork of her cabins.
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