The Price of the Prairie: A Story of Kansas
CHAPTER XXII
THE NINETEENTH KANSAS CAVALRY
"The regiments of Kansas have glorified our State on a hundred battle fields, but none served her more faithfully, or endured more in her cause than the Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry."
--HORACE L. MOORE.
When Camp Crawford was opened, northeast of town, between the Kaw Riverand the Shunganunga Creek, I went into training for regular cavalryservice, thinking less of pretty girls and more of good horses with thepassing days. I had plenty of material for both themes. Not only werethere handsome young ladies in the capital city, but this call formilitary supplies had brought in superb cavalry mounts. Every day thecamp increased its borders. The first to find places were the men of theEighteenth Kansas Regiment, veterans of the exalted order of the wardensof civilization. Endurance was their mark of distinction, and Loyaltytheir watchword. It was the grief of this regiment, and especially ofthe men directly under his leadership, that Captain Henry Lindsey wasnot made a Major for the Nineteenth. No more capable or more popularofficer than Lindsey ever followed an Indian trail across the Plains.
It was from the veterans of this Eighteenth Cavalry, men whom Lindseyhad led, that we younger soldiers learned our best lessons in the monthsthat followed. Those were my years of hero-worship. I had gone intothis service with an ideal, and the influence of such men as Morton andForsyth, the skill of Grover, and the daring of Donovan and Stillwellwere an inspiration to me. And now my captain was the same Pliley, whowith Donovan had made that hundred-mile dash to Fort Wallace to start aforce to the rescue of our beleaguered few in that island citadel ofsand.
The men who made up Pliley's troop were, for the most part, older thanmyself, and they are coming now to the venerable years; but deep in theheart of each surviving soldier of that company is admiration andaffection for the fearless, adroit, resourceful Captain, the modest,generous-hearted soldier.
On the last evening of our stay in Topeka there was a gay gathering ofyoung people, where, as usual, the soldier boys were the lions. Brassbuttons bearing the American Eagle and the magic inscription "U. S."have ever their social sway.
Rachel had been assigned to my care by the powers that were. AfterTillhurst's departure I had found my companions mainly elsewhere, and Iwould have chosen elsewhere on this night had I done the choosing. Onthe way to her aunt's home Rachel was more charming than I had everfound her before. It was still early, and we strolled leisurely on ourway and talked of many things. At the gate she suddenly exclaimed:
"Philip, you leave to-morrow. Maybe I shall never see you again; but I'mnot going to think that." Her voice was sweet, and her manner sincere."May I ask you one favor?"
"Yes, a dozen," I said, rashly.
"Let's take one more walk out to our locust tree."
"Oh, blame the locust tree! What did it ever grow for?" That was mythought but I assented with a show of pleasure, as conventionalitydemands. It was a balmy night in early November, not uncommon in thisglorious climate. The moon was one quarter large, and the dim light waspleasant. Many young people were abroad that evening. When we reachedthe swell where the tree threw its lacy shadows on its fallen yellowleaves, my companion grew silent.
"Cheer up, Rachel," I said. "We'll soon be gone and you'll be free fromthe soldier nuisance. And Dick Tillhurst is sure to run up here againsoon. Besides, you have all Massachusetts waiting to be conquered."
She put her little gloved hand on my arm.
"Philip Baronet, I'm going to ask you something. You may hate me if youwant to."
"But I don't want to," I assured her.
"I had a letter from Mr. Tillhurst to-day. He does want to come up," shewent on; "he says also that the girl you introduced to me in yourfather's office, what's her name?--I've forgotten it."
"So have I. Go on!"
"He says she is to be married at Christmas to somebody in Springvale.You used to like her. Tell me, do you care for her still? You could likesomebody else just as well, couldn't you, Phil?"
I put my hand gently over her hand resting on my arm, and said nothing.
"Could you, Phil? She doesn't want you any more. How long will you carefor her?"
"Till death us do part," I answered, in a low voice.
She dropped my arm, and even in the shadows I could see her eyes flash.
"I hate you," she cried, passionately.
"I don't blame you," I answered like a cold-blooded brute. "But, Rachel,this is the last time we shall be together. Let's be frank, now. Youdon't care for me. It is for the lack of one more scalp to dangle atyour door that you grieve. You want me to do all the caring. You couldforget me before we get home."
Then the tears came, a woman's sure weapon, and I hated myself more thanshe hated me.
"I can only wound your feelings, I always make you wretched. Now,Rachel, let's say good-bye to-night as the best of enemies and the worstof friends. I haven't made your stay in Kansas happy. You will forget meand remember only the pleasant people here."
When she bade me good-bye at her aunt's door, there was a harshness inher voice I had not noted before.
"If she really did care for me she wouldn't change so quickly. ByHeaven, I believe there is something back of all this love-making.Charming a dog as he is, Phil Baronet in himself hasn't that muchattraction for her," I concluded, and I breathed freer for the thought.When I came long afterwards to know the truth about her, I understoodthis sudden change, as I understood the charming pretensions toadmiration and affection that preceded it.
The next day our command started on its campaign against the unknowndangers and hardships and suffering of the winter Plains. It was animposing cavalcade that rode down the broad avenue of the capital citythat November day when we began our march. Up from Camp Crawford wepassed in regular order, mounted on our splendid horses, riding inplatoon formation. At Fourth Street we swung south on Kansas Avenue. Atthe head of the column twenty-one buglers rode abreast, Bud Anderson andO'mie among them. Our Lieutenant-Colonel, Horace L. Moore, and his stafffollowed in order behind the buglers. Then came the cavalry, troopafter troop, a thousand strong, in dignified military array, while fromdoor and window, side-walk and side-street, the citizens watched ourmovements and cheered us as we passed. Six months later the remnants ofthat well-appointed regiment straggled into Topeka like stray dogs, andno demonstration was given over their return. But they had done theirwork, and in God's good time will come the day "to glean up theirscattered ashes into History's golden urn."
A few miles out from Topeka we were overtaken by Governor Crawford. Hehad resigned the office of Chief Executive of Kansas to take command ofour regiment. The lustre of the military pageantry began to fade by thetime we had crossed the Wakarusa divide, and the capital city, nestlingin its hill-girt valley by the side of the Kaw, was lost to our view.Ours was to be a campaign of endurance, of dogged patience, of slow,grinding inactivity, the kind of campaign that calls for every resourceof courage and persistence from the soldier, giving him in return littleof the inspiration that stimulates to conquest on battle fields. Theyears have come and gone, and what the Nineteenth Kansas men were calledto do and to endure is only now coming into historical recognition.
Our introduction to what should befall us later came in the rainyweather, bitter winds, insufficient clothing, and limited rations of ourjourney before we reached Fort Beecher, on the Arkansas River. To-day,the beautiful city of Wichita marks the spot where the miserable littlegroup of tents and low huts, called Fort Beecher, stood then. Fiftymiles east of this fort we had passed the last house we were to see forhalf a year.
The Arkansas runs bottomside up across the Plains. Its waters are mainlyunder its bed, and it seems to wander aimlessly among the flat, lonelysand-bars, trying helplessly to get right again. Beyond this river welooked off into the Unknown. Somewhere back of the horizon in thatshadowy illimitable Southwest General Sheridan had established agarrison on the Canadian River, and here General Custer and his SeventhUnited States C
avalry were waiting for us. They had forage for ourhorses and food and clothing for ourselves. We had left Topeka withlimited supplies expecting sufficient reinforcement of food and grain atFort Beecher to carry us safely forward until we should reach CampSupply, Sheridan's stopping-place, wherever in the Southwest that mightbe. Then the two regiments, Custer's Seventh and the Kansas Nineteenth,were together to fall upon the lawless wild tribes and force them intosubmission.
Such was the prearranged plan of campaign, but disaster lay between usand this military force on the Canadian River. Neither the NineteenthCavalry commanders, the scouts, nor the soldiers knew a foot of thatpathless mystery-shrouded, desolate land stretching away to thesouthward beyond the Arkansas River. We had only a meagre measure ofrations, less of grain in proportion, and there was no military depot towhich we could resort. The maps were all wrong, and in the tracklesswastes and silent sand-dunes of the Cimarron country gaunt Starvationwas waiting to clutch our vitals with its gnarled claws; while with allour nakedness and famine and peril, the winter blizzard, swirling itsmyriad whips of stinging cold came raging across the land and caught usin its icy grip.
I had learned on the Arickaree how men can face danger and defy death; Ihad only begun to learn how they can endure hardship.
It was mid-November when our regiment, led by Colonel Crawford, crossedthe Arkansas River and struck out resolutely toward the southwest. Ourorders were to join Custer's command at Sheridan's camp in the IndianTerritory, possibly one hundred and fifty miles away. We must obeyorders. It is the military man's creed. That we lacked rations, forage,clothing, and camp equipment must not deter us, albeit we had notguides, correct maps, or any knowledge of the land we were invading.
My first lesson in this campaign was the lesson of comradeship. Myfather had put me on a horse and I had felt at home when I was so shortand fat my legs spread out on its back as if I were sitting on a floor.I was accounted a fair rider in Springvale. I had loved at first sightthat beautiful sorrel creature whose bones were bleaching on the littleisland in Colorado, whose flesh a gnawing hunger had forced me to eat.But my real lessons in horsemanship began in Camp Crawford, with fourjolly fellows whom I came to know and love in a way I shall never knowor love other men--my comrades. Somebody struck home to the soldierheart ever more when he wrote:
There's many a bond in this world of ours, Ties of friendship, and wreaths of flowers, And true-lover's knots, I ween; The boy and girl are sealed with a kiss; But there's never a bond, old friend, like this,-- We have drunk from the same canteen.
Such a bond is mine for these four comrades. Reed and Pete, Hadley andJohn Mac were their camp names, and I always think of them together.These four made a real cavalry man of me. It may be the mark of old ageupon me now, for even to-day the handsome automobile and the greatrailway engine can command my admiration and awe; but the splendidthoroughbred, intelligent, and quivering with power, I can command andlove.
The bond between the cavalry man and his mount is a strong one, and thespirit of the war-horse is as varied and sensitive as that of his rider.When our regiment had crossed the Arkansas River and was pushing its waygrimly into the heart of the silent stretches of desolation, our horsesgrew nervous, and a restless homesickness possessed them. Troop A weregreat riders, and we were quick to note this uneasiness.
"What's the matter with these critters, Phil?" Reed, who rode next tome, asked as we settled into line one November morning.
"I don't know, Reed," I replied. "This one is a dead match for the horseI rode with Forsyth. The man that killed him laughed and said, 'Theregoes the last damned horse, anyhow.'"
"Just so it ain't the first's all I'm caring for. You'll be in luck ifyou have the last," the rider next to Reed declared.
"What makes you think so, John?" I inquired.
"Oh, that's John Mac for you," Reed said laughing. "He's homesick."
"No, it's the horses that's homesick," John Mac answered. "They've gothorse sense and that's what some of us ain't got. They know they'llnever get across the Arkansas River again."
"Cheerful prospect," I declared. "That means we'll never get acrosseither, doesn't it?"
"Oh, yes," John answered grimly, "we'll get back all right. Don't knowas this lot'd be any special ornament to kingdom come, anyhow; but we'llgo through hell on the way comin' or goin'; now, mark me, Reed, andstop your idiotic grinning."
Whatever may have given this nervousness to the horses, so like apresentiment of coming ill, they were all possessed with the samespirit, and we remembered it afterwards when their bones were bleachingon the high flat lands long leagues beyond the limits of civilization.
The Plains had no welcoming smile for us. The November skies wereclouded over, and a steady rain soaked the land with all itsappurtenances, including a straggling command of a thousand menfloundering along day after day among the crooked canyons and gloomysandhills of the Cimarron country. In vain we tried to find a trailthat should lead us to Sheridan's headquarters at Camp Supply, on theCanadian River. Then the blizzard had its turn with us. Suddenly, as isthe blizzard's habit, it came upon us, sheathing our rain-soddenclothing in ice. Like a cloudburst of summer was this winter cloudburstof snow, burying every trail and covering every landmark with a mockingsmoothness. Then the mercury fell, and a bitter wind swept the openPlains.
We had left Fort Beecher with five days' rations and three days' forage.Seven days later we went into bivouac on a crooked little stream thatempties its salty waters into the Cimarron. It was a moonless, freezingnight. Fires were impossible, for there was no wood, and the buffalochips soaked with rain were frozen now and buried under the snow. Afurious wind threshed the earth; the mercury hovered about the zeromark. Alkali and salt waters fill the streams of that land, and our foodsupply was a memory two days old.
How precious a horse can become, the Plains have taught us. The man onfoot out there is doomed. All through this black night of perishingcold we clung to our frightened, freezing, starving horses. We had putour own blankets about them, and all night long we led them up and down.The roar of the storm, the confusion from the darkness, the frenzy fromhunger drove them frantic. A stampede among them there would have meantinstant death to many of us, and untold suffering to the dismountedremainder. How slowly the cold, bitter hours went by! I had thought theburning heat of the Colorado September unendurable. I wondered in thattime of freezing torment if I should ever again call the heat a burden.
There were five of us tramping together in one little circle thatnight--Reed and John Mac, and Pete and Hadley, with myself. In all thegarrison I came to know these four men best. They were near my own age;their happy-go-lucky spirit and their cheery laughter were food anddrink. They proved to me over and over how kind-hearted a soldier canbe, and how hard it is to conquer a man who wills himself unconquerable.Without these four I think I should never have gotten through thatnight.
Morning broke on our wretched camp at last, and we took up the day'smarch, battling with cold and hunger over every foot of ground. On thetenth day after we crossed the Arkansas River the crisis came. Our armyclothes were waiting for us at Camp Supply. Rain and ice and the roughusage of camp life had made us ragged already, and our shoes were wornout. And still the cold and storm stayed with us. We wrapped pieces ofbuffalo hide about our bare feet and bound the horses' nose-bags on themin lieu of cavalry boots. Our blankets we had donated to our mounts, andwe had only dog tents, well adapted to ventilation, but a very mockeryat sheltering.
Our provisions were sometimes reduced to a few little cubes of sugardoled out to each from the officers' stores. The buffalo, by which wehad augmented our food supply, were gone now to any shelter whitherinstinct led them. It was rare that even a lone forsaken old bull of theherd could be found in some more sheltered spot.
At last with hungry men and frenzied horses, with all sense of directionlost, with a deep covering of snow enshrouding the earth, and amerciless cold cutting straight to the life centres, we went into campon the tent
h night in a little ravine running into Sand Creek, anotherCimarron tributary, in the Indian Territory. We were unable to move anyfarther. For ten days we had been on the firing line, with hunger andcold for our unconquerable foes. We could have fought Indians even tothe death. But the demand on us was for endurance. It is a woman'sprovince to suffer and wait and bear. We were men, fighting men, butours was the struggle of resisting, not attacking, and the tenth nightfound us vanquished. Somebody must come to our rescue now. We could notsave ourselves. In the dangerous dark and cold, to an unknown place,over an unknown way, somebody must go for us, somebody must be thesacrifice, or we must all perish. The man who went out from the camp onSand Creek that night was one of the two men I had seen rise up from thesand-pits of the Arickaree Island and start out in the blackness and theperil to carry our cry to Fort Wallace--Pliley, whose name our Statemust sometime set large in her well-founded, well-written story.
With fifty picked men and horses he went for our sakes, and more, aye,more than he ever would claim for himself. He was carrying rescue tohomes yet to be, he was winning the frontier from peril, he was payingthe price for the prairie kingdom whose throne and altar are thehearthstone.
"Camp Starvation," we christened our miserable, snow-besiegedstopping-place. We had fire but we were starving for food. Our horseswere like wild beasts in their ravenous hunger, tearing the clothingfrom the men who came too carelessly near to their rope tethers.
That splendid group of mounts that had pranced proudly down KansasAvenue less than a month before, moving on now nearly seven days withoutfood, dying of cruel starvation, made a feature of this tragical wintercampaign that still puts an ache into my soul. Long ago I lost most ofthe sentiment out of my life, but I have never seen a hungry horse sincethat Winter of '68 that I let go unfed if it lay within my power tobring it food.
The camp was well named. It was Hadley and Reed and Pete and John Mac,that good-natured quartet, who stood sponsors for that title. We were apitiful lot of fellows in this garrison. We mixed the handful of flourgiven to us with snow water, and, wrapping the unsalted dough around asagebrush spike, we cooked it in the flames, and ate it from the stick,as a dog would gnaw a bone. The officers put a guard around the fewlittle hackberry trees to keep the men from eating the berries and thebark. Not a scrap of the few buffalo we found was wasted. Even theentrails cleansed in the snow and eaten raw gives hint of how hungry wewere.
At last in our dire extremity it was decided to choose five hundred ofthe strongest men and horses to start under the command ofLieutenant-Colonel Horace L. Moore, without food or tents, through thesnow toward the Beulah Land of Camp Supply. Pliley had been gone forthree days. We had no means of knowing whether his little company hadfound Sheridan's Camp or were lost in the pathless snows of afeatureless land, and we could not hold out much longer.
I was among the company of the fittest chosen to make this journey. Iwas not yet twenty-two, built broad and firm, and with all the heritageof the strength and endurance of the Baronet blood, I had a power ofresistance and recoil from conditions that was marvellous to theveterans in our regiment.
It was mid-forenoon of the fifth of November when the Nineteenth Kansasmoved out of Camp Crawford by the Shunganunga and marched proudly downthe main thoroughfare of Topeka at the auspicious beginning of itscampaign. Twenty days later, Lieutenant-Colonel Moore again headed amarching column, this time, moving out of Camp Starvation on SandCreek--five hundred ragged, hungry men with famishing horses, bearing nosupplies, going, they could only guess whither, and unable even tosurmise how many days and nights the going would consume. It was wellfor me that I had an ideal. I should have gone mad otherwise, for I wasnever meant for the roving chance life of a Plains scout.
When our division made its tentless bivouac with the sky for a coveringon the first night out beyond the Cimarron River from Camp Starvation,the mercury was twenty degrees below zero. Even a heart that could pumpblood like mine could hardly keep the fires of the body from going out.There was a full moon somewhere up in the cold, desolate heavenslighting up a frozen desolate land. I shiver even now at the picture mymemory calls up. In the midst of that night's bitter chill came a dreamof home, of the warm waters of the Neosho on August afternoons, of thesunny draw, and--Marjie. Her arms were about my neck, her curly head wasnestling against my shoulder, the little ringlets about her templestouched my cheek. I lifted her face to kiss her, but a soft shadowydarkness crept between us, and I seemed to be sinking into it deeper anddeeper. It grew so black I longed to give up and let it engulf me. Itwas so easy a thing to do.
Then in a blind stupidity I began to hear a voice in my ears, and tofind myself lunging back and forth and stumbling lamely on my left foot.The right foot had no feeling, no power of motion, and I forgot that Ihad it.
"What are you doing, Pete?" I asked, when I recognized who it was thatwas holding me.
Pete was like an elder brother, always doing me a kind service.
"Trying to keep you from freezing to death," he replied.
"Oh, let me go. It's so easy," I answered back drowsily.
"By golly, I've a notion to do it." Pete's laugh was a tonic in itself."Here you and your horse are both down, and you can't stand on one ofyour feet. I'll bet it's froze, and you about to go over the River; andwhen a fellow tries to pull you back you say, 'Oh, let me go!' Youdarned renegade! you ought to go."
He was doing his best for me all the time, and he had begun none toosoon, for Death had swooped down near me, and I was ready to give up thestruggle. The warmth of the horse's body had saved one foot, but as tothe other--the little limp I shall always have had its beginning in thatnight's work.
The next day was Thanksgiving, although we did not know it. There are noholy days or gala days to men who are famishing. That day the commandhad no food except the few hackberries we found and the bark of thetrees we gnawed upon. It was the hardest day of all the march.
Pete, who had pulled me back from the valley of the shadow the nightbefore, in his search for food that day, found a luckless littlewild-cat. And that cat without sauce or dressing became his Thanksgivingturkey.
The second night was bitterly cold, and then came a third day ofstruggling through deep snows on hilly prairies, and acrosscanyon-guarded bridgeless streams. The milestones of our way were thepoor bodies of our troop horses that had given up the struggle, whiletheir riders pushed resolutely forward.
On the fourth day out from Camp Starvation we came at sundown to theedge of a low bluff, beyond which lay a fertile valley. If Paradise atlife's eventide shall look as good to me, it will be worth all the caresof the journey to make an abundant entrance therein.
Out of the bitter cold and dreary snow fields, trackless and treeless,whereon we had wandered starving and uncertain, we looked down on abroad wooded valley sheltering everything within it. Two convergingstreams glistening in the evening light lay like great bands of silverdown this valley's length. Below us gleamed the white tents ofSheridan's garrison, while high above them the Stars and Stripes insilent dignity floated lightly in the gentle breeze of sunset.
That night I slept under a snug tent on a soft bed of hay. And again Idreamed as I had dreamed long ago of the two strange women whom I wasstruggling to free from a great peril.
General Sheridan had expected the Kansas regiment to make the journeyfrom Fort Beecher on the Arkansas to his station on the Canadian Riverin four or five days. Our detachment of five hundred men had covered itin fourteen days, but we had done it on five days' rations, and threedays' forage. Small wonder that our fine horses had fallen by the way.It is only the human organism backed by a soul, that can suffer andendure.
Pliley and his fifty men who had left us the night we went into camp onSand Creek had reached Sheridan three days in advance of us, and alreadyrelief was on its way to those whom we had left beyond thesnow-beleaguered canyons of the Cimarron. The whole of our regiment wassoon brought in and this part of the journey and its hardships becamebut a memory. Offic
ial war reports account only for things done. Norecord is kept of the cost of effort. The glory is all for the battlelists of the killed or wounded, and yet I account it the one heroicthing of my life that I was a Nineteenth Kansas Cavalry man through thatNovember of 1868 on the Plains.