by Charles King
CHAPTER V.
Mid June had come, and there was the very devil to pay--so said thescouts and soldiers up along the Big Horn. But scouts and soldiers werefar removed from the States and cities where news was manufactured, andthose were days in which our Indian outbreaks were described in thepress long after, instead of before, their occurrence. Such couriers ashad got through to Frayne brought dispatches from the far-isolated postsalong that beautiful range, insisting that the Sioux were swarming inevery valley. Such dispatches, when wired to Washington and "referred"to the Department of the Interior and re-referred to the head of theIndian Bureau, were scoffed at as sensational.
"Our agents report the Indians peaceably assembled at theirreservations. None are missing at the weekly distribution of suppliesexcept those who are properly accounted for as out on their annualhunt." "The officers," said the papers, "seem to see red Indians inevery bush," and unpleasant things were hinted at the officers as aconsequence.
Indians there certainly were in other sections, and they wereunquestionably "raising the devil" along the Smoky Hill and the SouthernPlains, and there the Interior Department insisted that troops in strongforce should be sent. So, too, along the line of the Union Pacific.Officials were still nervous. Troops of cavalry camped at intervals offorty miles along the line between Kearney and Julesburg, and evenbeyond. At Washington and the great cities of the East, therefore, therewas no anxiety as to the possible fate of those little garrisons, withtheir helpless charge of women and children away up in the heart of theSioux country. But at Laramie and Frayne and Emory, the nearest frontierposts; at Cheyenne, Omaha and Gate City the anxiety was great. When JohnFolsom said the Indians meant a war of extermination people west of theMissouri said: "Withdraw those garrisons while there is yet time or elsesend five thousand troops to help them." But people east of the Missourisaid: "Who the devil is John Folsom? What does he know about it? Here'swhat the Indian agents say, and that's enough," and people east of theMissouri being vastly in the majority, neither were the garrisonsrelieved nor the reinforcements sent. What was worse, John Folsom'surgent advice that they discontinue at once all work at Warrior Gap andsend the troops and laborers back to Reno was pooh-poohed.
"The contracts have been let and signed. The material is all on its way.We can't hack out now," said the officials. "Send runners to Red Cloudand get him in for a talk. Promise him lots of presents. Yes, if he musthave them, tell him he shall have breech-loaders and copper cartridges,like the soldiers--to shoot buffalo with, of course. Promise him prettymuch anything to be good and keep his hands off a little longer till weget that fort and the new agency buildings finished, and then let him dowhat he likes."
Such were the instructions given the commissioners and interpretershurried through Gate City and Frayne, and on up to Reno just within thelimit fixed by Folsom. Red Cloud and his chiefs came in accordingly,arrayed in pomp, paint and finery; shook hands grimly with therepresentatives of the Great Father, critically scanned the profferedgifts, disdainfully rejected the muzzle-loading rifles and old dragoonhorse-pistols heaped before him. "Got heap better," was his comment, andnothing but brand new breech-loaders would serve his purpose. Promisethem and he'd see what could be done to restrain his young men. But theywere "pretty mad," he said, and couldn't be relied upon to keep thepeace unless sure of getting better arms and ammunition to help thembreak it next time. It was only temporizing. It was only encouraging theveteran war-chief in his visions of power and control. The commissionerscame back beaming, "Everything satisfactorily arranged. Red Cloud andhis people are only out for a big hunt." But officers whose wives andchildren prayed fearfully at night within the puny wooden stockades, andlistened trembling to the howls and tom-toms of the dancing Indiansaround the council fires in the neighboring valleys, wished to heaventhey had left those dear ones in safety at their Eastern homes--wishedto heaven they could send them thither now, but well knew that it wastoo late. Only as single spies, riding by night, hiding by day, werecouriers able to get through from the Big Horn to the Platte. Of scoutsand soldiers sent at different times since the middle of May, seven weremissing, and never, except through vague boastings of the Indians, wereheard of again.
"It is a treacherous truce, I tell you," said Folsom, with grave,anxious face, to the colonel commanding Fort Emory. "I have known RedCloud twenty years. He's only waiting a few weeks to see if thegovernment will be fool enough to send them breech-loaders. If it does,he'll be all the better able to fight a little later on. If it doesn'the will make it his _casus belli_."
And the veteran colonel listened, looked grave, and said he had done hisutmost to convince his superiors. He could do no more.
It was nearly three hundred miles by the winding mountain road from GateCity to Warrior Gap. Over hill and dale and mountain pass the road ranto Frayne, thence, fording the North Platte, the wagon trains, heavilyguarded, had to drag over miles of dreary desert, over shadeless slopesand divides to the dry wash of the Powder, and by roads deep in alkalidust and sage brush to Cantonment Reno, where far to the west the grandrange loomed up against the sky--another long day's march away to thenearest foothills, to the nearest drinkable water, and then, forty milesfurther still, in the heart of the grand pine-covered heights, was therock-bound gateway to a lovely park region within, called by the Siouxsome wild combination of almost unpronounceable syllables, which, freelytranslated, gave us Warrior Gap, and there at last accounts,strengthened by detachments from Frayne and Reno, the little command offort builders worked away, ax in hand, rifle at hand, subjected everyhour to alarm from the vedettes and pickets posted thickly all aboutthem, pickets who were sometimes found stone dead at their posts,transfixed with arrows, scalped and mutilated, and yet not once hadIndians in any force been seen by officers or man about the spot sincethe day Red Cloud's whole array passed Brooks's troop on the Reno trail,peaceably hunting buffalo. "An' divil a sowl in in the outfit," said oldSergeant Shaughnessy, "that hadn't his tongue in his cheek."
For three months that hard-worked troop had been afield, and the timehad passed and gone when its young first lieutenant had hoped for aleave to go home and see the mother and Jess. His captain was stillailing and unfit for duty in saddle. He could not and would not ask forleave at such a time, and yet at the very moment when he was mostearnestly and faithfully doing his whole duty at the front, slander wasbusy with his name long miles at the rear.
Something was amiss with Burleigh, said his cronies at Gate City. He hadcome hurrying back from the hills, had spent a day in his office and nota cent at the club, had taken the night express unbeknown to anybody buthis chief clerk, and gone hurrying eastward. It was a time when hisservices were needed at the depot, too. Supplies, stores, all manner ofmaterial were being freighted from Gate City over the range to thePlatte and beyond, yet he had wired for authority to hasten to Chicagoon urgent personal affairs, got it and disappeared. A young regimentalquartermaster was ordered in from Emory to take charge of shipments andsign invoices during Burleigh's temporary absence, and the only otherofficer whom Burleigh had seen and talked with before his start was thevenerable post commander. One after another the few cavalry troops(companies) on duty at Emory had been sent afield until now only one wasleft, and three days after Burleigh started there came a dispatch fromdepartment headquarters directing the sending of that one to Frayne atonce. Captain Brooks's troop, owing to the continued illness of itscommander, would be temporarily withdrawn and sent back to Emory toreplace it.
Marshall Dean did not know whether to be glad or sorry. Soldier from topto toe, he was keenly enjoying the command of his troop. He gloried inmountain scouting, and was in his element when astride a spirited horse.Then, too, the air was throbbing with rumors of Indian depredationsalong the northward trails, and everything pointed to serious outbreakany moment, and when it came he longed to be on hand to take his shareand win his name, for with such a troop his chances were better forhonors and distinctions than those of any youngster he knew. Thereforehe long
ed to keep afield. On the other hand the visit paid by Jessie'sschool friend, little "Pappoose" Folsom, was to be returned in kind.John Folsom had begged and their mother had consented that after a weekat home Jess should accompany her beloved friend on a visit to her farwestern home. They would be escorted as far as Omaha, and there Folsomhimself would meet them. His handsome house was ready, and, so saidfriends who had been invited to the housewarming, particularly wellstocked as to larder and cellar. There was just one thing on which GateCity gossips were enabled to dilate that was not entirely satisfactoryto Folsom's friends, and that was the new presiding goddess of theestablishment.
"What on earth does John Folsom want of a housekeeper?" asked thehelpmates of his friends at Fort Emory, and in the bustling, busy town."Why don't he marry again?" queried those who would gladly have seensome unprovided sister, niece or daughter thus cozily disposed of. Itwas years since Elinor's mother's death, and yet John Folsom seemed tomourn her as fondly as ever, and except in mid-winter, barely a monthwent by in which he did not make his pilgrimage to her never-neglectedgrave. Yet, despite his vigorous years in saddle, sunshine or storm, andhis thorough love for outdoor life, Folsom, now well over fifty, couldno longer so lightly bear the hard life of the field. He was amazed tosee how his sleepless dash to head off Red Cloud, and his days andnights of gallop back, had told upon him. Women at Fort Emory who lookedwith approving eyes on his ruddy face and trim, erect figure, all soeloquent of health, and who possibly contemplated, too, his solid bankaccount, and that fast-building house, the finest in Gate City, had beentelling him all winter long he ought to have a companion--an elder guidefor Miss Elinor on her return; he ought to have some one to preside athis table; and honest John had promptly answered: "Why, Nell will do allthat," which necessitated their hinting that although Miss Folsom wouldbe a young lady in years, she was only a child in experience, and wouldbe much the better for some one who could take a mother's place. "No onecould do that," said John, with sudden swimming of his eyes, and thatput as sudden a stop to their schemings, for the time at least, but onlyfor the time. Taking counsel together, and thinking how lovely it wouldbe now if Mr. Folsom would only see how much there was in this unmarrieddamsel, or that widowed dame, the coterie at Emory again returned to thesubject, until John, in his perplexity, got the idea that proprietydemanded that he should have a housekeeper against his daughter'scoming, and then he did go and do, in his masculine stupidity, justexactly what they couldn't have had him do for worlds--invite a woman,of whom none of their number had ever heard, to come from Omaha and takethe domestic management of his hearth and home. All he knew of her waswhat he heard there. She was the widow of a volunteer officer who haddied of disease contracted during the war. She was childless, almostdestitute, accomplished, and so devoted to her church duties. She wasinteresting and refined, and highly educated. He heard the eulogiumspronounced by the good priest and some of his flock, and Mrs. Fletcher,a substantial person of some forty years at least, was duly installed.
Fort Emory was filled with women folk and consternation--most of the menbeing afield. The seething question of the hour was whether they shouldcall on her, whether she was to be received at the fort, whether she wasto be acknowledged and recognized at all, and then came, _mirabiledictu_, a great government official from Washington to inspect the UnionPacific and make speeches at various points along the road, and Mrs.Fletcher, mind you, walked to church the very next Sunday on theHonorable Secretary's arm, sat by his side when he drove out to hear theband at Emory, and received with him on the colonel's veranda, and thatsettled it. Received and acknowledged and visited she had to be. Shemight well prove a woman worth knowing.
Within a fortnight she had made the new homestead blossom like the rose.Within a month everything was in perfect order for the reception ofElinor and her school friend--a busy, anxious month, in which Folsom wasflitting to and fro to Reno and Frayne, as we have seen; to Hal's ranchin the Medicine Bow, to Rawhide and Laramie, and the reservations inNorthwestern Nebraska; and it so happened that he was away the nightMajor Burleigh, on his way to the depot, dropped in to inquire if hecould see Mr. Folsom a moment on important business. The servant said hewas not in town--had gone, she thought, to Omaha. She would inquire ofMrs. Fletcher, and meantime would the major step inside? Step inside,and stand wonderingly at the threshold of the pretty parlor he did; andthen there was a rustle of silken skirts on the floor above, and, as heturned to listen, his haggard, careworn face took on a look somethinglike that which overspread it the night he got the letter atReno--something that told of bewilderment and perplexity as a quiet,modulated voice told the servant to tell the gentleman Mr. Folsom mightnot return for several days. Burleigh had no excuse to linger, none toask to hear that voice again; yet as he slowly descended the steps itsaccents were still strangely ringing in his ears. Where on earth had heheard that voice before?