Red Men and White

Captain Glynn, arriving at his own door, stuck his glowing cigar against the thermometer hanging outside: twenty-three below zero. “Oh Lord!” said the captain, briefly. He went in and told his striker to get Sergeant Keyser. Then he sat down and waited. “‘Look at Jupiter!’” he muttered, angrily. “What an awful old man!”

It was rather awful. The captain had not supposed generals in the first two hours of their arrival at a post to be in the habit of finding out more about your aparejos than you knew yourself. But old the General was not. At the present day many captains are older than Crook was then.

Down at the barracks there was the same curiosity about what the “Old Man” was going to do as existed at the post commander’s during the early part of supper. It pleased the cavalry to tell the infantry that the Old Man proposed to take the infantry to the Columbia River next week; and the infantry replied to the cavalry that they were quite right as to the river and the week, and it was hard luck the General needed only mounted troops on this trip. Others had heard he had come to superintend the building of a line of telegraph to Klamath, which would be a good winter’s job for somebody; but nobody supposed that anything would happen yet awhile.

And then a man came in and told them the General had sent his boots to the saddler to have nails hammered in the soles.

“That eer means business,” said Jack Long, “’n’ I guess I’ll nail up mee own cowhides.”

“Jock,” said Specimen Jones to Cumnor, “you and me ’ain’t got any soles to ourn because they’re contract boots, y’u see. I’ll nail up yer feet if y’u say so. It’s liable to be slippery.”

Cumnor did not take in the situation at once. “What’s your hurry?” he inquired of Jack Long. Therefore it was explained to him that when General Crook ordered his boots fixed you might expect to be on the road shortly. Cumnor swore some resigned, unemphatic oaths, fondly supposing that “shortly” meant some time or other; but hearing in the next five minutes the definite fact that F troop would get up at two, he made use of profound and thorough language, and compared the soldier with the slave.

“Why, y’u talk almost like a man, Jock,” said Specimen Jones. “Blamed if y’u don’t sound pretty near growed up.”

Cumnor invited Jones to mind his business.

“Yer muss-tache has come since Arizona,” continued Jones, admiringly, “and yer blue eye is bad-lookin’ – worse than when we shot at yer heels and y’u danced fer us.”

“I thought they were going to give us a rest,” mumbled the youth, flushing. “I thought we’d be let stay here a spell.”

“I thought so too, Jock. A little monotony would be fine variety. But a man must take his medicine, y’u know, and not squeal.” Jones had lowered his voice, and now spoke without satire to the boy whom he had in a curious manner taken under his protection.

“Look at what they give us for a blanket to sleep in,” said Cumnor. “A fellow can see to read the newspaper through it.”

“Look at my coat, Cumnor.” It was Sergeant Keyser showing the article furnished the soldier by the government. “You can spit through that.” He had overheard their talk, and stepped up to show that all were in the same box. At his presence reticence fell upon the privates, and Cumnor hauled his black felt hat down tight in embarrassment, which strain split it open half-way round his head. It was another sample of regulation clothing, and they laughed at it.

“We all know the way it is,” said Keyser, “and I’ve seen it a big sight worse. Cumnor, I’ve a cap I guess will keep your scalp warm till we get back.”

And so at two in the morning F troop left the bunks it had expected to sleep in for some undisturbed weeks, and by four o’clock had eaten its well-known breakfast of bacon and bad coffee, and was following the “awful old man” down the north bank of the Boisé, leaving the silent, dead, wooden town of shanties on the other side half a mile behind in the darkness. The mountains south stood distant, ignoble, plain-featured heights, looming a clean-cut black beneath the piercing stars and the slice of hard, sharp-edged moon, and the surrounding plains of sage and dry-cracking weed slanted up and down to nowhere and nothing with desolate perpetuity. The snowfall was light and dry as sand, and the bare ground jutted through it at every sudden lump or knoll. The column moved through the dead polar silence, scarcely breaking it. Now and then a hoof rang on a stone, here and there a bridle or a sabre clinked lightly; but it was too cold and early for talking, and the only steady sound was the flat, can-like tankle of the square bell that hung on the neck of the long-eared leader of the pack-train. They passed the Dailey ranch, and saw the kittens and the liniment-bottle, but could get no information as to what way E-egante had gone. The General did not care for that, however; he had devised his own route for the present, after a talk with the Indian guides. At the second dismounting during march he had word sent back to the pack-train not to fall behind, and the bell was to be taken off if the rest of the mules would follow without the sound of its shallow music. No wind moved the weeds or shook the stiff grass, and the rising sun glittered pink on the patched and motley-shirted men as they blew on their red hands or beat them against their legs. Some were lucky enough to have woollen or fur gloves, but many had only the white cotton affairs furnished by the government. Sarah the squaw laughed at them: the interpreter was warm as she rode in her bright green shawl. While the dismounted troopers stretched their limbs during the halt, she remained on her pony talking to one and another.

“Gray Fox heap savvy,” said she to Mr. Long. “He heap get up in the mornin’.”

“Thet’s what he does, Sarah.”

“Yas. No give soldier hy-as Sunday” (a holiday).

“No, no,” assented Mr. Long. “Gray Fox go téh-téh” (trot).

“Maybe he catch E-egante, maybe put him in skookum-house (prison)?” suggested Sarah.

“Oh no! Lor’! E-egante good Injun. White Father he feed him. Give him heap clothes,” said Mr. Long.

“A – h!” drawled Sarah, dubiously, and rode by herself.

“You’ll need watchin’,” muttered Jack Long.

The trumpet sounded, the troopers swung into their saddles, and the line of march was taken up as before, Crook at the head of the column, his ragged fur collar turned up, his corduroys stuffed inside a wrinkled pair of boots, the shot-gun balanced across his saddle, and nothing to reveal that he was any one in particular, unless you saw his face. As the morning grew bright, and empty, silent Idaho glistened under the clear blue, the General talked a little to Captain Glynn.

“E-egante will have crossed Snake River, I think,” said he. “I shall try to do that to-day; but we must be easy on those horses of yours. We ought to be able to find these Indians in three days.”

“If I were a lusty young chief,” said Glynn, “I should think it pretty tough to be put on a reservation for dipping a couple of kittens in the molasses.”

“So should I, captain. But next time he might dip Mrs. Dailey. And I’m not sure he didn’t have a hand in more serious work. Didn’t you run across his tracks anywhere this summer?”

“No, sir. He was over on the Des Chutes.”

“Did you hear what he was doing?”

“Having rows about fish and game with those Warm Spring Indians on the west side of the Des Chutes.”

“They’re always poaching on each other. There’s bad blood between E-egante and Uma-Pine.”

“Uma-Pine’s friendly, sir, isn’t he?”

“Well, that’s a question,” said Crook. “But there’s no question about this E-egante and his Pah-Utes. We’ve got to catch him. I’m sorry for him. He doesn’t see why he shouldn’t hunt anywhere as his fathers did. I shouldn’t see that either.”

“How strong is this band reported, sir?”

“I’ve heard nothing I can set reliance upon,” said Crook, instinctively levelling his shot-gun at a big bird that rose; then he replaced the piece across his saddle and was silent. Now Captain Glynn had heard there were three hundred Indians with E-egante, which was a larger number than he had been in the habit of attacking with forty men. But he felt discreet about volunteering any information to the General after last night’s exhibition of what the General knew. Crook partly answered what was in Glynn’s mind. “This is the only available force I have,” said he. “We must do what we can with it. You’ve found out by this time, captain, that rapidity in following Indians up often works well. They have made up their minds – that is, if I know them – that we’re going to loaf inside Boisé Barracks until the hard weather lets up.”

Captain Glynn had thought so too, but he did not mention this, and the General continued. “I find that most people entertained this notion,” he said, “and I’m glad they did, for it will help my first operations very materially.”

The captain agreed that there was nothing like a false impression for assisting the efficacy of military movements, and presently the General asked him to command a halt. It was high noon, and the sun gleamed on the brass trumpet as the long note blew. Again the musical strain sounded on the cold, bright stillness, and the double line of twenty legs swung in a simultaneous arc over the horses’ backs as the men dismounted.

“We’ll noon here,” said the General; and while the cook broke the ice on Boisé River to fill his kettles, Crook went back to the mules to see how the sore backs were standing the march. “How d’ye do, Jack Long?” said he. “Your stock is travelling pretty well, I see. They’re loaded with thirty days’ rations, but I trust we’re not going to need it all.”

“Mwell, General, I don’t specially kyeer meself ’bout eatin’ the hull outfit.” Mr. Long showed his respect for the General by never swearing in his presence.

“I see you haven’t forgotten how to pack,” Crook said to him. “Can we make Snake River to-day, Jack?”

“That’ll be forty miles, General. The days are pretty short.”

“What are you feeding to the animals?” Crook inquired.

“Why, General, you know jest ’s well ’s me,” said Jack, grinning.

“I suppose I do if you say so, Jack. Ten pounds first ten days, five pounds next ten, and you’re out of grain for the next ten. Is that the way still?”

“Thet’s the way, General, on these yere thirty-day affairs.”

Through all this small-talk Crook had been inspecting the mules and the horses on picket-line, and silently forming his conclusion. He now returned to Captain Glynn and shared his mess-box.

They made Snake River. Crook knew better than Long what the animals could do. And next day they crossed, again by starlight, turned for a little way up the Owyhee, decided that E-egante had not gone that road, trailed up the bluffs and ledges from the Snake Valley on to the barren height of land, and made for the Malheur River, finding the eight hoofs of two deer lying in a melted place where a fire had been. Mr. Dailey had insisted that at least fifty Indians had drunk his liniment and trifled with his cats. Indeed, at times during his talk with General Crook the old gentleman had been sure there were a hundred. If this were their trail which the command had now struck, there may possibly have been eight. It was quite evident that the chief had not taken any three hundred warriors upon that visit, if he had that number anywhere. So the column went up the Malheur main stream through the sage-brush and the gray weather (it was still cold, but no sun any more these last two days), and, coming to the North Fork, turned up towards a spur of the mountains and Castle Rock. The water ran smooth black between its edging of ice, thick, white, and crusted like slabs of cocoanut candy, and there in the hollow of a bend they came suddenly upon what they sought.

Stems of smoke, faint and blue, spindled up from a blurred acre of willow thicket, dense, tall as two men, a netted brown and yellow mesh of twigs and stiff wintry rods. Out from the level of their close, nature-woven tops rose at distances the straight, slight blue smoke-lines, marking each the position of some invisible lodge. The whole acre was a bottom ploughed at some former time by a wash-out, and the troops looked down on it from the edge of the higher ground, silent in the quiet, gray afternoon, the empty sage-brush territory stretching a short way to fluted hills that were white below and blackened with pines above.

The General, taking a rough chance as he often did, sent ground scouts forward and ordered a charge instantly, to catch the savages unready; and the stiff rods snapped and tangled between the beating hoofs. The horses plunged at the elastic edges of this excellent fortress, sometimes half lifted as a bent willow levered up against their bellies, and the forward-tilting men fended their faces from the whipping twigs. They could not wedge a man’s length into that pliant labyrinth, and the General called them out. They rallied among the sage-brush above, Crook’s cheeks and many others painted with purple lines of blood, hardened already and cracking like enamel. The baffled troopers glared at the thicket. Not a sign nor a sound came from in there. The willows, with the gentle tints of winter veiling their misty twigs, looked serene and even innocent, fitted to harbor birds – not birds of prey – and the quiet smoke threaded upwards through the air. Of course the liniment-drinkers must have heard the noise.

“What do you suppose they’re doing?” inquired Glynn.

“Looking at us,” said Crook.

“I wish we could return the compliment,” said the captain.

Crook pointed. Had any wind been blowing, what the General saw would have been less worth watching. Two willow branches shook, making a vanishing ripple on the smooth surface of the tree-tops. The pack-train was just coming in sight over the rise, and Crook immediately sent an orderly with some message. More willow branches shivered an instant and were still; then, while the General and the captain sat on their horses and watched, the thicket gave up its secret to them; for, as little light gusts coming abreast over a lake travel and touch the water, so in different spots the level maze of twigs was stirred; and if the eye fastened upon any one of these it could have been seen to come out from the centre towards the edge, successive twigs moving, as the tops of long grass tremble and mark the progress of a snake. During a short while this increased greatly, the whole thicket moving with innumerable tracks. Then everything ceased, with the blue wands of smoke rising always into the quiet afternoon.

“Can you see ’em?” said Glynn.

“Not a bit. Did you happen to hear any one give an estimate of this band?”

Glynn mentioned his tale of the three hundred.

It was not new to the General, but he remarked now that it must be pretty nearly correct; and his eye turned a moment upon his forty troopers waiting there, grim and humorous; for they knew that the thicket was looking at them, and it amused their American minds to wonder what the Old Man was going to do about it.

“It’s his bet, and he holds poor cards,” murmured Specimen Jones; and the neighbors grinned.

And here the Old Man continued the play that he had begun when he sent the orderly to the pack-train. That part of the command had halted in consequence, disposed itself in an easy-going way, half in, half out of sight on the ridge, and men and mules looked entirely careless. Glynn wondered; but no one ever asked the General questions, in spite of his amiable voice and countenance. He now sent for Sarah the squaw.

“You tell E-egante,” he said, “that I am not going to fight with his people unless his people make me. I am not going to do them any harm, and I wish to be their friend. The White Father has sent me. Ask E-egante if he has heard of Gray Fox. Tell him Gray Fox wishes E-egante and all his people to be ready to go with him to-morrow at nine o’clock.”

And Sarah, standing on the frozen bank, pulled her green shawl closer, and shouted her message faithfully to the willows. Nothing moved or showed, and Crook, riding up to the squaw, held his hand up as a further sign to the flag of peace that had been raised already. “Say that I am Gray Fox,” said he.

On that there was a moving in the bushes farther along, and, going opposite that place with the squaw, Crook and Glynn saw a narrow entrance across which some few branches reached that were now spread aside for three figures to stand there.

“E-egante!” said Sarah, eagerly. “See him big man!” she added to Crook, pointing. A tall and splendid buck, gleaming with colors, and rich with fringe and buckskin, watched them. He seemed to look at Sarah, too. She, being ordered, repeated what she had said; but the chief did not answer.

“He is counting our strength,” said Glynn.

“He’s done that some time ago,” said Crook. “Tell E-egante,” he continued to the squaw, “that I will not send for more soldiers than he sees here. I do not wish anything but peace unless he wishes otherwise.”

Sarah’s musical voice sounded again from the bank, and E-egante watched her intently till she was finished. This time he replied at some length. He and his people had not done any harm. He had heard of Gray Fox often. All his people knew Gray Fox was a good man and would not make trouble. There were some flies that stung a man sitting in his house, when he had not hurt them. Gray Fox would not hurt any one till their hand was raised against him first. E-egante and his people had wondered why the horses made so much noise just now. He and his people would come to-morrow with Gray Fox.

And then he went inside the thicket again, and the willows looked as innocent as ever. Crook and the captain rode away.

“My speech was just a little weak coming on top of a charge of cavalry,” the General admitted. “And that fellow put his finger right on the place. I’ll give you my notion, captain. If I had said we had more soldiers behind the hill, like as not this squaw of ours would have told him I lied; she’s an uncertain quantity, I find. But I told him the exact truth – that I had no more – and he won’t believe it, and that’s what I want.”

So Glynn understood. The pack-train had been halted in a purposely exposed position, which would look to the Indians as if another force was certainly behind it, and every move was now made to give an impression that the forty were only the advance of a large command. Crook pitched his A tent close to the red men’s village, and the troops went into camp regardlessly near. The horses were turned out to graze ostentatiously unprotected, so that the people in the thicket should have every chance to notice how secure the white men felt. The mules pastured comfortably over the shallow snow that crushed as they wandered among the sage-bush, and the square bell hung once more from the neck of the leader and tankled upon the hill. The shelter-tents littered the flat above the wash-out, and besides the cook-fire others were built irregularly far down the Malheur North Fork, shedding an extended glimmer of deceit. It might have been the camp of many hundred. A little blaze shone comfortably on the canvas of Crook’s tent, and Sergeant Keyser, being in charge of camp, had adopted the troop cook-fire for his camp guard after the cooks had finished their work. The willow thicket below grew black and mysterious, and quiet fell on the white camp. By eight the troopers had gone to bed. Night had come pretty cold, and a little occasional breeze, that passed like a chill hand laid a moment on the face, and went down into the willows. Now and again the water running through the ice would lap and gurgle at some air-hole. Sergeant Keyser sat by his fire and listened to the lonely bell sounding from the dark. He wished the men would feel more at home with him. With Jack Long, satirical, old, and experienced, they were perfectly familiar, because he was a civilian; but to Keyser, because he had been in command of a battalion, they held the attitude of school-boys to a master – the instinctive feeling of all privates towards all officers. Jones and Cumnor were members of his camp guard. Being just now off post, they stood at the fire, but away from him.

“How do you like this compared with barracks?” the sergeant asked, conversationally.

“It’s all right,” said Jones.

“Did you think it was all right that first morning? I didn’t enjoy it much myself. Sit down and get warm, won’t you?”

The men came and stood awkwardly. “I ’ain’t never found any excitement in getting up early,” said Jones, and was silent. A burning log shifted, and the bell sounded in a new place as the leader pastured along. Jones kicked the log into better position. “But this affair’s gettin’ inter-esting,” he added.

“Don’t you smoke?” Keyser inquired of Cumnor, and tossed him his tobacco-pouch. Presently they were seated, and the conversation going better. Arizona was compared with Idaho. Everybody had gone to bed.

“Arizona’s the most outrageous outrage in the United States,” declared Jones.

“Why did you stay there six years, then?” said Cumnor.

“Guess I’d been there yet but for you comin’ along and us both enlistin’ that crazy way. Idaho’s better. Only,” said Jones, thoughtfully, “coming to an ice-box from a hundred thousand in the shade, it’s a wonder a man don’t just split like a glass chimbly.”

The willows crackled, and all laid hands on their pistols.

“How! how!” said a strange, propitiating voice.

It was a man on a horse, and directly they recognized E-egante himself. They would have raised an alarm, but he was alone, and plainly not running away. Nor had he weapons. He rode into the fire-light, and “How! how!” he repeated, anxiously. He looked and nodded at the three, who remained seated.

“Good-evening,” said the sergeant.

“Christmas is coming,” said Jones, amicably.

“How! how!” said E-egante. It was all the English he had. He sat on his horse, looking at the men, the camp, the cook-fire, the A tent, and beyond into the surrounding silence. He started when the bell suddenly jangled near by. The wandering mule had only shifted in towards the camp and shaken his head; but the Indian’s nerves were evidently on the sharpest strain.

“Sit down!” said Keyser, making signs, and at these E-egante started suspiciously.

“Warm here!” Jones called to him, and Cumnor showed his pipe.

The chief edged a thought closer. His intent, brilliant eyes seemed almost to listen as well as look, and though he sat his horse with heedless grace and security, there was never a figure more ready for vanishing upon the instant. He came a little nearer still, alert and pretty as an inquisitive buck antelope, watching not the three soldiers only, but everything else at once. He eyed their signs to dismount, looked at their faces, considered, and with the greatest slowness got off and came stalking to the fire. He was a fine tall man, and they smiled and nodded at him, admiring his clean blankets and the magnificence of his buckskin shirt and leggings.

“He’s a jim-dandy,” said Cumnor.

“You bet the girls think so,” said Jones. “He gets his pick. For you’re a fighter too, ain’t y’u?” he added, to E-egante.

“How! how!” said that personage, looking at them with grave affability from the other side of the fire. Reassured presently, he accepted the sergeant’s pipe; but even while he smoked and responded to the gestures, the alertness never left his eye, and his tall body gave no sense of being relaxed. And so they all looked at each other across the waning embers, while the old pack-mule moved about at the edge of camp, crushing the crusted snow and pasturing along. After a time E-egante gave a nod, handed the pipe back, and went into his thicket as he had come. His visit had told him nothing; perhaps he had never supposed it would, and came from curiosity. One person had watched this interview. Sarah the squaw sat out in the night, afraid for her ancient hero; but she was content to look upon his beauty, and go to sleep after he had taken himself from her sight. The soldiers went to bed, and Keyser lay wondering for a while before he took his nap between his surveillances. The little breeze still passed at times, the running water and the ice made sounds together, and he could hear the wandering bell, now distant on the hill, irregularly punctuating the flight of the dark hours.

By nine next day there was the thicket sure enough, and the forty waiting for the three hundred to come out of it. Then it became ten o’clock, but that was the only difference, unless perhaps Sarah the squaw grew more restless. The troopers stood ready to be told what to do, joking together in low voices now and then; Crook sat watching Glynn smoke; and through these stationary people walked Sarah, looking wistfully at the thicket, and then at the faces of the adopted race she served. She hardly knew what was in her own mind. Then it became eleven, and Crook was tired of it, and made the capping move in his bluff. He gave the orders himself.