CHAPTER XVIII
THE SUNLIGHT ON OLD GLORY
The little green tent is made of sod, And it is not long, and it is not broad, But the soldiers have lots of room. And the sod is a part of the land they saved, When the flag of the enemy darkly waved, A symbol of dole and gloom.
--WALT MASON.
"Baronet, we must have that spade we left over there this morning. Areyou the man to get it?" Sharp Grover said to me just after dusk. "We'vegot to have water or die, and Burke here can't dig a well with his toenails, though he can come about as near to it as anybody." Burke was anindustrious Irishman who had already found water for us. "And then wemust take care of these." He motioned toward a still form at my feet,and his tone was reverent.
"Over there" was the camp ground of the night before. It had beentrampled by hundreds of feet. Our camp was small, and finding the spadeby day might be easy enough. To grope in the dark and danger was anothermatter. Twenty-four hours before, I would not have dared to try. Nothingcounted with me now. I had just risen from the stiffening body of acomrade whom I had been trying to compose for his final rest. I had nomore sentiment for myself than I had for him. My time might come at anymoment.
"Yes, sir, I'll go," I answered the scout, and I felt of my revolvers;my own and the one I had taken from the man who lay at my feet.
"Well, take no foolish chances. Come back if the way is blocked, but getthe spade if you can. Take your time. You'd better wait an hour than bedead in a minute," and he turned to the next work before him.
He was guide, commander, and lieutenant all in one, and his duties weremany. I slipped out in the danger-filled shadows toward our campingplace of the night before. Every step was full of peril. The Indians hadno notion of letting us slip through their fingers in the dark. Added totheir day's defeats, we had slain their greatest warrior, and they wouldhave perished by inches rather than let us escape now. So our island wasguarded on every side. The black shadowed Plains were crossed andre-crossed by the braves silently gathering in their lost ones forburial. My scalp would have been a joy to them who had as yet no humantrophy to gloat over. Surely a spade was never so valuable before. Mysense of direction is fair and to my great relief I found that preciousimplement marvellously soon, but the creek lay between me and theisland. Just at its bank I was compelled to drop into a clump of weedsas three forms crept near me and straightened themselves up in thegloom. They were speaking in low tones, and as they stood upright Icaught their words.
"You made that bugle talk, anyhow, Dodd."
So Dodd was the renegade whom I had heard three times in the conflict.My vision at the gorge was not the insanity of the Plains, after all. Iwas listening ravenously now. The man who had spoken stood nearest me.There was a certain softness of accent and a familiar tone in hisspeech. As he turned toward the other two, even in the dim light, theoutline of his form and the set of his uncovered head I knew.
"That's Le Claire, as true as heaven, all but the voice," I said tomyself. "But I'll never believe that metallic ring is the priest's. Itis Le Claire turned renegade, too, or it's a man on a pattern so likehim, they couldn't tell themselves apart."
I recalled all the gentleness and manliness of the Father. Never an actof his was cruel, or selfish, or deceptive. True to his principles, hehad warned us again and again not to trust Jean. And yet he had alwaysseemed to protect the boy, always knew his comings and goings, and thetwo had grown yearly to resemble each other more and more in face andform and gesture. Was Le Claire a villain in holy guise?
I did not meditate long, for the third man spoke. Oh, the "good Indian"!Never could he conceal his voice from me.
"Now, what I want you to do is to tell them all which one he is. I'vejust been clear around their hole in the sand. I could have hit mychoice of the lot. But he wasn't there."
No, I had just stepped out after the spade.
"If he had been, I'd have shot him right then, no matter what come next.But I don't want him shot. He's mine. Now tell every brave to leave himto me, the big one, nearly as big as Roman Nose, whiter than the others,because he's not been out here long. But he's no coward. The one withthick dark curly hair; it would make a beautiful scalp. But I want him."
"What will you do with him?" the man nearest to me queried.
"Round the bend below the gorge the Arickaree runs over a little stripof gravel with a ripple that sounds just like the Neosho above the DeepHole. I'll stake him out there where he can hear it and think of homeuntil he dies. And before I leave him I've got a letter to read to him.It'll help to keep Springvale in his mind if the water fails. I'vepromised him what to expect when he comes into my country."
"Do it," the smallest of the three spoke up. "Do it. It'll pay him forsetting Bud Anderson on me and nearly killing me in the alley back ofthe courthouse the night we were going to burn up Springvale. I wasmaking for the courthouse to get the papers to burn sure. I'd got thekey and could have got them easy--and there's some needed burningspecially--when that lispin' tow-head caught my arm and gave my headsuch a cut that I'll always carry the scar, and twisted my wrist so I'venever been able to lift anything heavier than an artillery bugle since.Nobody ever knew it back there but Mapleson and Conlow and Judson. Funnynobody ever guessed Judson's part in that thing except his wife, and shekept it to herself and broke her heart and died. Everybody else said hewas water-bound away from home. He wasn't twenty feet from his own housewhen the Whately girl come out. He was helpin' Jean then. Thought hermother'd be killed, and Whately'd never get home alive--as hedidn't--and he'd get the whole store; greediest man on earth for money.He's got the store anyhow, now, and he's going to marry the girl he washelpin' Jean to take out of his way. That store never would have beenburnt that night. I wish Jean had got her, though. Then I'd turnedthings against Tell Mapleson and run him out of town instead of hisdriving me from Springvale. Tell played a double game damned well. I'moutlawed and he's gettin' richer every day at home."
So spoke the Rev. Mr. Dodd, pastor of the Methodist Church South. Itmay be I needed the discipline of that day's fighting to hold memotionless and silent in the clump of grass beside these three men.
"Well, let's get up there and watch the fool women cry for their men."It was none other than Father Le Claire's form before me, but this man'svoice was never that soft French tone of the good man's--low andmusical, matching his kindly eyes and sweet smile. As the three slippedaway I did the only foolish act of mine in the whole campaign: I rosefrom my hiding place, shouldered that spade, and stalked straight downthe bank, across the creek, and up to our works in the centre of theisland as upright and free as if I were walking up Cliff Street to JudgeBaronet's front door. Jean's words had put into me just what Ineeded--not acceptance of the inevitable, but a power of resistance, theindomitable spirit that overcomes.
History is stranger than fiction, and the story of the Kansas frontieris more tragical than all the Wild West yellow-backed novels ever turnedoff the press. To me this campaign of the Arickaree has always read likea piece of bloody drama, so terrible in its reality, it puts theimagination out of service.
We had only one chance for deliverance, we must get the tidings of ourdreadful plight to Fort Wallace, a hundred miles away. Jack Stillwelland another brave scout were chosen for the dangerous task. At midnightthey left us, moving cautiously away into the black blank space towardthe southwest, and making a wide detour from their real line ofdirection. The Indians were on the alert, and a man must walk asnoiselessly as a panther to slip between their guards.
The scouts wore blankets to resemble the Indians more closely in theshadows of the night. They made moccasins out of boot tops, that theirfootprints might tell no story. In sandy places they even walkedbackward that they should leave no tell-tale trail out of the valley.
Dawn found them only three miles away from their starting place. Ahollow bank overhung with long, dry grasses, and fronted with ranksunflowers, gave them a place of concealment through the daylight hours.Again on
the second night they hurried cautiously forward. The secondmorning they were near an Indian village. Their only retreat was in thetall growth of a low, marshy place. Here they crouched through anotherlong day. The unsuspecting squaws, hunting fuel, tramped the grassesdangerously near to them, but a merciful Providence guarded theirhiding-place.
On the third night they pushed forward more boldly, hoping that the nextday they need not waste the precious hours in concealment. In the earlymorning they saw coming down over the prairie the first guard of aCheyenne village moving southward across their path. The Plains wereflat and covertless. No tall grass, nor friendly bank, nor bush, norhollow of ground was there to cover them from their enemies. But outbefore them lay the rotting carcass of an old buffalo. Its hide stillhung about its bones. And inside the narrow shelter of this carcass thetwo concealed themselves while a whole village passed near them trailingoff toward the south.
Insufficient food, lack of sleep, and poisonous water from the buffalowallows brought nausea and weakness to the faithful men making their wayacross the hostile land to bring help to us in our dire extremity. It isall recorded in history how these two men fared in that hazardousundertaking. No hundred miles of sandy plain were ever more fraught withperil; and yet these two pressed on with that fearless and indomitablecourage that has characterized the Saxon people on every field ofconquest.
Meanwhile day crept over the eastern horizon, and the cold chill of theshadows gave place to the burning glare of the September sun. Hot andwithering it beat down upon us and upon the unburied dead that lay allabout us. The braves that had fallen in the strife strewed the island'sedges. Their blood lay dark on the sandy shoals of the stream andstained to duller brown the trampled grasses. Daylight brought therenewal of the treacherous sharpshooting. The enemy closed in about usand from their points of vantage their deadly arrows and bullets werehurled upon our low wall of defence. And so the unequal strugglecontinued. Ours was henceforth an ambush fight. The redskins did notattack us in open charge again, and we durst not go out to meet them.And so the thing became a game of endurance with us, a slow wearing awayof ammunition and food, a growing fever from weakness and loss of blood,a festering of wounds, the ebbing out of strength and hope; while putridmule meat and muddy water, the sickening stench from naked bloatedbodies under the blazing heat of day, the long, long hours of watchingfor deliverance that came not, and the certainty of the fate awaiting usat last if rescue failed us--these things marked the hours and made themall alike. As to the Indians, the passing of Roman Nose had broken theirfighting spirit; and now it was a mere matter of letting us run to theend of our tether and then--well, Jean had hinted what would happen.
On the third night two more scouts left us. It seemed an eternity sinceStillwell and his comrade had started from the camp. We felt sure thatthey must have fallen by the way, and the second attempt was doublyhazardous. The two who volunteered were quiet men. They knew what thetask implied, and they bent to it like men who can pay on demand theprice of sacrifice. Their names were Donovan and Pliley, recorded in themilitary roster as private scouts, but the titles they bear in thememory of every man who sat in that grim council on that night, has agrander sound than the written records declare.
"Boys," Forsyth said, lifting himself on his elbow where he lay in hissand bed, "this is the last chance. If you can get to the fort and sendus help we can hold out a while. But it must come quickly. You know whatit means for you to try, and for us, if you succeed."
The two men nodded assent, then girding on their equipments, they gaveus their last messages to be repeated if deliverance ever came to us andthey were never heard of again. We were getting accustomed to this now,for Death stalked beside us every hour. They said a brief good-bye andslipped out from us into the dangerous dark on their chosen task. Thenthe chill of the night, with its uncertainty and gloom, with its ominoussilences broken only by the howl of the gray wolves, who closed in aboutus and set up their hunger wails beyond the reach of our bullets; andthe heat of the day with its peril of arrow and rifle-ball filled thelong hours. Hunger was a terror now. Our meat was gone save a fewdecayed portions which we could barely swallow after we had sprinkledthem over with gunpowder. For the stomach refused them even instarvation. Dreams of banquets tortured our short, troubled sleep, andthe waking was a horror. A luckless little coyote wandered one day toonear our fold. We ate his flesh and boiled his bones for soup. And oneday a daring soldier slipped out from our sand pit in search offood--anything--to eat in place of that rotting horseflesh. In thebushes at the end of the island, he found a few wild plums. Oh, foodfor the gods was that portion of stewed plums carefully doled out toeach of us.
Six days went by. I do not know on which one the Sabbath fell, for Godhas no holy day in the Plains warfare. Six days, and no aid had comefrom Fort Wallace. That our scouts had failed, and our fate was decreed,was now the settled conclusion in every mind.
On the evening of this sixth day our leader called us about him. Howgray and drawn his face looked in the shadowy gray light, but his eyeswere clear and his voice steady.
"Boys, we've got to the end of our rope, now. Over there," pointing tothe low hills, "the Indian wolves are waiting for us. It's the hazard ofwar; that's all. But we needn't all be sacrificed. You, who aren'twounded, can't help us who are. You have nothing here to make oursuffering less. To stay here means--you all know what. Now the men whocan go must leave us to what's coming. I feel sure now that you can getthrough together somehow, for the tribes are scattering. It is only theremnant left over there to burn us out at last. There is no reason whyyou should stay here and die. Make your dash for escape togetherto-night, and save your lives if you can. And"--his voice was brave andfull of cheer--"I believe you can."
Then a silence fell. There were two dozen of us gaunt, hungry men,haggard from lack of sleep and the fearful tax on mind and body thattested human endurance to the limit--two dozen, to whom escape was notimpossible now, though every foot of the way was dangerous. Life issweet, and hope is imperishable. We looked into one another's facegrimly, for the crisis of a lifetime was upon us. Beside me lay Morton.The handkerchief he had bound about his head in the first hour ofbattle had not once been removed. There was no other handkerchief totake its place.
"Go, Baronet," he said to me. "Tell your father, if you see him again,that I remembered Whately and how he went down at Chattanooga."
His voice was low and firm and yet he knew what was awaiting him. Oh!men walked on red-hot ploughshares in the days of the winning of theWest.
Sharp Grover was sitting beside Forsyth. In the silence of the councilthe guide turned his eyes toward each of us. Then, clenching his gaunt,knotted hands with a grip of steel, he said in a low, measured voice:
"It's no use asking us, General. We have fought together, and, byHeaven, we'll die together."
In the great crises of life the only joy is the joy of self-sacrifice.Every man of us breathed freer, and we were happier now than we had beenat any time since the conflict began. And so another twenty-four hours,and still another twenty-four went by.
The sun came up and the sun went down, And day and night were the same as one.
And any evil chance seemed better than this slow dragging out ofmisery-laden time.
"Nature meant me to defend the weak and helpless. The West needs me," Ihad said to my father. And now I had given it my best. A slow fever wascreeping upon me, and weariness of body was greater than pain andhunger. Death would be a welcome thing now that hope seemed dead. Ithought of O'mie, bound hand and foot in the Hermit's Cave, and likehim, I wished that I might go quickly if I must go. For back of mystolid mental state was a frenzied desire to outwit Jean Pahusca, whowas biding his time, and keeping a surer watch on our poorbattle-wrecked, starving force than any other Indian in the horde thatkept us imprisoned.
The sunrise of the twenty-fifth of September was a dream of beauty onthe Colorado Plains. I sat with my face to the eastward and saw thewhole pageantry of morning sweep
up in a splendor of color throughstretches of far limitless distances. Oh! it was gorgeous, with a gloryfresh from the hand of the Infinite God, whose is the earth and theseas. Mechanically I thought of the sunrise beyond the Neosho Valley,but nothing there could be half so magnificent as this. And as I looked,the thought grew firmer that this sublimity had been poured out for mefor the last time, and I gazed at the face of the morning as we look atthe face awaiting the coffin lid.
And even as the thought clinched itself upon me came the sentinel's cryof "Indians! Indians!"
We grasped our weapons at the shrill warning. It was the death-grip now.We knew as surely as we stood there that we could not resist this lastattack. The redskins must have saved themselves for this final blow,when resistance on our part was a feeble mockery. The hills to thenorthward were black with the approaching force, but we were determinedto make our last stand heroically, and to sell our lives as dearly aspossible. As with a grim last measure of courage we waited, SharpGrover, who stood motionless, alert, with arms ready, suddenly threw hisrifle high in air, and with a shout that rose to heaven, he cried in anecstasy of joy:
"By the God above us, it's an ambulance!"
To us for whom the frenzied shrieks of the squaws, the fiendish yells ofthe savage warriors, and the weird, unearthly wailing for the dead werethe only cries that had resounded above the Plains these many days,this shout from Grover was like the music of heaven. A darkness camebefore me, and my strength seemed momentarily to go from me. It was buta moment, and then I opened my eyes to the sublimest sight it is givento the Anglo-American to look upon.
Down from the low bluffs there poured a broad surge of cavalry, inperfect order, riding like the wind, the swift, steady hoof-beats oftheir horses marking a rhythmic measure that trembled along the groundin musical vibration, while overhead--oh, the grandeur of God's graciousdawn fell never on a thing more beautiful--swept out by the free windsof heaven to its full length, and gleaming in the sunlight, Old Gloryrose and fell in rippling waves of splendor.
On they came, the approaching force, in a mad rush to reach us. And wewho had waited for the superb charge of Roman Nose and his savagewarriors, as we wait for death, saw now this coming in of life, and theregiment of the unconquerable people.
We threw restraint to the winds and shouted and danced and hugged eachother, while we laughed and cried in a very transport of joy.
It was Colonel Carpenter and his colored cavalry who had made a dashacross the country rushing to our rescue. Beside the Colonel at theirhead, rode Donovan the scout, whom we had accounted as dead. It was hisunerring eye that had guided this command, never varying from thestraight line toward our danger-girt entrenchment on the Arickaree.
Before Carpenter's approaching cavalry the Indians fled for their lives,and they who a few hours hence would have been swinging bloody tomahawksabove our heads were now scurrying to their hiding-places far away.
Like the passing of a hurricane, horses, mules, men, alldashed toward the place]
Never tenderer hands cared for the wounded, and never were bath andbandage and food and drink more welcome. Our command was shifted to aclean spot where no stench of putrid flesh could reach us. Rest andcare, such as a camp on the Plains can offer, was ours luxuriously; andhardtack and coffee, food for the angels, we had that day, to ourintense satisfaction. Life was ours once more, and hope, and home, andcivilization. Oh, could it be true, we asked ourselves, so long had westood face to face with Death.
The import of this struggle on the Arickaree was far greater than wedreamed of then. We had gone out to meet a few foemen. What we reallyhad to battle with was the fighting strength of the northern Cheyenneand Sioux tribes. Long afterwards it came to us what this victory meant.The broad trail we had eagerly followed up the Arickaree fork of theRepublican River had been made by bands on bands of Plains Indiansmobilizing only a little to the westward, gathering for a deadlypurpose. At the full of the moon the whole fighting force, two thousandstrong, was to make a terrible raid, spreading out on either side of theRepublican River, reaching southward as far as the Saline Valley andnorthward to the Platte, and pushing eastward till the older settlementsturned them back. They were determined to leave nothing behind them butdeath and desolation. Their numbers and leadership, with the defencelesscondition of the Plains settlers, give broad suggestion of what thatraid would have done for Kansas. Our victory on the Arickaree broke upthat combination of Indian forces, for all future time. It was for suchan unknown purpose, and against such unguessed odds, that fifty of usled by the God of all battle lines, had gone out to fight. We had metand vanquished a foe two hundred times our number, aye, crippled itspower for all future years. We were lifting the fetters from thefrontier; we were planting the standards westward, westward. In thehistory of the Plains warfare this fight on the Arickaree, though notthe last stroke, was one of the decisive struggles in breaking thesavage sovereignty, a sovereignty whose wilderness demesne to-day is aland of fruit and meadow and waving grain, of peaceful homes and wealthand honor.
It was impossible for our wounded comrades to begin the journey to FortWallace on that day. When evening came, the camp settled down to quietand security: the horses fed at their rope tethers, the fires smoulderedaway to gray ashes, the sun swung down behind the horizon bar, the goldand scarlet of evening changed to deeper hues and the long, purpletwilight was on the silent Colorado Plains. Over by the Arickaree thecavalry men lounged lazily in groups. As the shades of evening gathered,the soldiers began to sing. Softly at first, but richer, fuller, sweetertheir voices rose and fell with that cadence and melody only the negrovoice can compass. And their song, pulsing out across the undulatingvalley wrapped in the twilight peace, made a harmony so wonderfullytender that we who had dared danger for days unflinchingly now turnedour faces to the shadows to hide our tears.
We are tenting to-night on the old camp ground. Give us a song to cheer Our weary hearts, a song of home And friends we love so dear. Many are the hearts that are weary to-night, Wishing for this war to cease, Many are the hearts looking for the right To see the dawn of peace.
So the cavalry men sang, and we listened to their singing with heartsstirred to their depths. And then with prayers of thankfulness for ourdeliverance, we went to sleep. And over on the little island, under theshallow sands, the men who had fallen beside us lay with patient, foldedhands waiting beside the Arickaree waters till the last reveille shallsound for them and they enter the kingdom of Eternal Peace.