Campaigning with Crook, and Stories of Army LifeKing, Charles
History
Campaigning with Crook, and Stories of Army Life
King, Charles
Crook, George, 1829-1890; Indians of North America -- Wars -- 1866-1895; United States. Army. Cavalry, 5th
left him as he fell, probably a year before we came upon the spot.
Towards sunset the clouds that had gathered all day, and sprinkled us
early in the afternoon, opened their flood-gates, and the rain came down
in torrents. We built Indian "wickyups" of saplings and elastic twigs,
threw ponchos and blankets over them, and crawled under; but 'twas no
use. Presently the whole country was flooded, and we built huge fires,
huddled around them in the squashy mud, and envied our horses, who
really seemed pleased at the change. General Terry and his cavalry and
infantry marched past our bivouac early in the evening, went on down
stream, and camped somewhere among the timber below. We got through the
night, I don't remember how, exactly; and my note-book is not very full
of detail of this and the next four days. We would have been wetter
still on the following morning--Saturday, the 12th--if we _could_ have
been, for it rained too hard to march, and we hugged our camp-fires
until one p.m., when it gave signs of letting up a little and we saddled
and marched away down the Tongue ten or eleven miles, by which time it
was nearly dark, raining harder than ever. General Carr and Mr. Barbour
Lathrop (the correspondent of the San Francisco _Call_, who had turned
out to be an old acquaintance of some older friends of mine, and whose
vivacity was unquenchable, even by such weather as this) made a double
wickyup under the only tree there was on the open plain on which we
camped for the night, and, seeing what looked to be a little bunch of
timber through the mist a few hundred yards away, I went to prospect for
a lodging; found it to be one of the numerous aërial sepulchres of the
Sioux, which we had been passing for the last four days--evidences that
Custer's dying fight was not so utterly one-sided, after all. But,
unattractive as this was for a mortal dwelling-place, its partial
shelter was already pre-empted, and, like hundreds of others, I made an
open night of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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