are marching northeastward on the trail of the infantry. We fill our lungs with deep draughts of the rare, bracing mountain breeze, take a last glance at the grand crags and buttresses of rock to the southward, then with faces eagerly set towards the rolling smoke-wreaths that mark the track of the savage foe in the valley of the "Deje Agie," we close our columns, shake free our bridle reins, and press steadily forward. "Our wild campaign has begun." CHAPTER VI. THE MEET ON THE ROSEBUD. That General Crook's command, now designated as the "Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition," started upon its campaign in the best possible spirits and under favoring skies, no one who saw us that bright August morning could have doubted. Unhappily, there was no one to see, no one to cheer or applaud, and, once having cut loose from our wagons and their guards, there was not a soul to mark our progress, unless it were some lurking scout in distant lair, who trusted to his intimate knowledge of the country and to his pony's fleetness to keep himself out of our clutches. Once fairly in the valley of the Prairie Dog, we had a good look at our array. The Fifth Cavalry in long column were bringing up the rear on this our first day's march from Goose Creek; our packers and their lively little mules jogging briskly along upon our right flank, while the space between us and the rolling foot-hills on the left was thickly covered with our Crow allies. The Shoshones were ahead somewhere, and we proceeded to scrape acquaintance with these wild warriors of the far northwest, whom we were now meeting for the first time. Organized in 1855, our regiment had seen its first Indian service on the broad plains of Texas, and was thoroughly well known among the Comanches, Kiowas, and Lipans when the great war of the rebellion broke out. In those days, with Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Earl Van Dorn, Kirby Smith, Fitz Hugh Lee, and a dozen others who became notorious in the rebel army as its representative officers, our regiment had been not inaptly styled "Jeff. Davis's Own." But it outgrew the baleful title during the war, and has lost almost every trace of its ante-bellum _personnel_. Two of its most distinguished captains of to-day--Montgomery and "Jack" Hayes--it is true acquired their earliest military experience in its ranks under those very officers. But, while they are all the better as cavalrymen for that fact, they are none the less determined in their loyalty, and both fought in many a wild charge during the rebellion, defending their flag against the very men who had taught them the use of their sabres. In that stern baptism of blood the Fifth became regenerate, and after stirring service in the Army of the Potomac during the war, and throughout the South during reconstruction days, the regiment once more drifted out on the plains, was introduced to the Cheyennes and Sioux in the winter of 1868-9, became very much at