Under Fire. Charles King

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СКАЧАТЬ it's rough, I know, but all they've got to do is tag along with the column till night and then eat their fill. You haven't had enough to live on, and may have work ahead. Here comes Hastings now."

      And as he spoke the battalion adjutant came spurring down from a low ridge at the front fast as a miserably jaded horse could bear him. Earlier in the campaign every man would have felt the thrill of coming excitement—a chase, a brush of some kind, perhaps—but now all were weak and weary. Even the Patlanders in Truman's troop, men of whom it had often been said that they'd rather fight than eat, were no more full of fight to-day than they were of food.

      "What's he want?" growled Devers, sauntering over to where the officer stood. "We've left the Indians miles behind. Surely there can't be any between us and the river."

      Many eyes were fixed on the coming horseman or on the little group of scouts and soldiers surrounding the major, who, kneeling, was levelling his field-glasses over the ridge at some objects far away, apparently towards the southeast.

      "They're everywhere—damn them!" was the curt answer, "except where we want them. But he's looking off square to the left, not ahead."

      This was true. Whatever it might have been far to the front of the weary column that caused the little squad of scouts to signal halt after their first cautious peep over that ridge, the object at which so many were now excitedly peering and pointing was at right angles to the direction of the march. Yet did the advance keep well concealed against observant eyes ahead, though why they should do so when every Indian in Dakota by this time knew all about them, their movements, and those of the main column farther over towards the Little Missouri, Truman couldn't understand.

      "Have you ten horses that can stand a side scout?" asked the adjutant, urging his mud-spattered mount to the head of Devers's troop. He spoke abruptly, and without salute, to his superior officer—his own captain at that.

      "What are we on but a side scout now?" demanded that officer, in the surly tone the best of men may fall into under such circumstances.

      "That isn't the question," replied Mr. Hastings, "and we've no time for points. Davies, it's your detail. There's something—we can't make out what—over towards the river. Report to the major and I'll find your party."

      "I doubt if my horse can stand any side scout," said Davies, slowly, "but I am ready."

      "Oh, your horse's as good as any in the outfit," interposed the adjutant, impatiently. "The major wants ten men from your troop at once, captain—the ten who have the strongest horses. It won't take 'em more than a dozen miles out of the way, I reckon. The whole crowd would go, only men and horses can barely make the day's march as it is."

      "See any Indians?" asked Truman, lounging up.

      "I haven't. Crounse and the scouts say they have, and it's likely enough. Of course you've seen the pony tracks, and what's queer is that many of them head over towards the very point where this smoke is drifting from. Looks as if they'd jumped some wagons and burned them."

      Meantime, Mr. Davies had slowly mounted and was urging his reluctant horse into some semblance of a canter. As the slope in front of him steepened, however, both horse and rider abandoned the effort, and, full fifty yards below the point where the battalion commander and his scouts were in consultation, the lieutenant dismounted, and leaving his steed unguarded to nibble at a patch of scant and sodden herbage that had survived the Indian fires, he slowly climbed the ascent. "I am ordered to report to you, sir," was all he had to say.

      The major lowered his field-glass and looked back over a broad, burly shoulder garbed in canvas shooting-jacket. Not a stitch of uniform graced his massive person from head to heel, yet soldier was manifest in every gesture or attitude. A keen observer might have said that a shade of disappointment crossed his fine, full-bearded face as he heard the subaltern's voice, but no sign of it appeared in his tone when he spoke.

      "Mr. Davies, just take this glass and see what you make of that smoke off yonder. The sun is getting low and it baffles me somewhat." Silently the lieutenant obeyed, and creeping up towards the crest he knelt and took a preliminary peep.

      Issuing from the Bad Lands the jaded column had been plodding all day long, though with frequent enforced rests, through a rolling sea of barren, turfless earth. What grass had carpeted its surface in the spring had been burned off by sagacious Indians, bent on impeding by every known device the march of troops through their lands—and what device the Indian does not know is little worth knowing. Under a dripping leaden sky the earth lay desolate and repulsive. Miles away to the north the dim, castellated buttes and pinnacles of the range were still faintly visible, and the tortuous trail of the column of twos winding its way over wave after wave of barren prairie like the wake of some terrestrial bark in a sea of mud. Far to the westward a jagged line of hills, sharply defined, seemed to rear their crests from the general level of the land, and somewhere along the eastern slope of that ridge, and not far from where two twin-pointed buttes seemed peeping over at these uncouth invaders, the main command of the expedition should have passed earlier in the day, making for the crossing of the swift-running stream that circled the northern border of some black, forbidding heights lying like a dark patch upon the landscape at its southwestern edge. Black as it looked, that was their one refuge. There alone dare they hope to find food. Thither had been sent an advanced detail with orders to buy at owners' prices flour, bacon, bread, coffee, anything the outlying settlements might have for sale that would sustain life. Men who had been living on horse or prairie-dog would not be fastidious. Here, too, the major had hoped by night to bivouac his weary men, but it seemed desperately far away. The march had been much impeded, and now, far out on his left flank was something that could not be passed uninvestigated. He, with his worn battalion of four troops, had been detached from the main column three days previous with orders to follow the trail of a war-party of Sioux, and smite them hip and thigh if he could catch them in forty-eight hours; if not, to veer around for the valley and rejoin the column at its bivouac among the foot-hills. There they should rest and recuperate. The pursued Indians, fortunately, had turned southward and gone jogging leisurely away towards their reservations, until warned of the pursuit by ambitious young braves still hovering about the troops in hope of slicing off the scalp of some straggler. Then, every man for himself, they had apparently scattered over the face of the country, laughing gleefully to think what fun the white chief would have in deciding which trail to follow. The situation on the third day out had been summarized by Crounse, the guide, about as follows: "So long as this outfit pulls together it won't catch an Indian; so soon as it doesn't pull together it'll catch hell," which being interpreted meant that the four companies united were too strong for the number of Indians within striking distance, or say three days' march, but that if it were divided into little detachments, and sent hither and yon in pursuit of such small parties as would then allow themselves to be seen, the chances were that those pursuing squads would one by one be lured beyond support, surrounded, cut off, and then massacred to a man. The major and his officers, most of them, knew this as well as Crounse. They knew, moreover, that even so large a command as theirs had been cut off, surrounded, and massacred more than once in the history of Sioux warfare, but then the Indians were massed, not scattered helter-skelter all over the continent as was the case the end of this eventful summer. Well did Major Warren understand that with such broken-down horses and weakened men he could now effect little or nothing against the Indians after whom he had been sent, even could he overtake them, and his instructions were literally obeyed. It was high time for him to restore his men to their comrades. He was making the best of his way to the rendezvous, hoping almost against hope to reach the welcome of the bivouac fires, and hot tins of coffee and toothsome morsels of hard-tack and bacon, things they had not had a scrap of for three days, and only occasional reminders of for the previous ten, when lo! off to their flank, far to the southeast there appeared this unwelcome yet importunate sign. Was it appeal for help or lure to ambush? Who could say? Only one thing was certain—a thick СКАЧАТЬ