With the festering dead around them, Shedding poison in the air, When the crippled chieftain ordered, The little Jew was there.” Footnote 37: “To-day cattle stand knee-deep in the Arickaree. The water no longer ripples around the island, as the shifting sands have filled the channel to the south. But if one digs under the cottonwoods he can find bullets, cartridges, and knives. And near at hand is the simple white shaft that tells where Beecher and Roman Nose, typifying all that is brave in white man and red, forgot all enmity in the last sleep that knows no dreams of racial hatred.” I cut this from a newspaper the other day. How well written, frequently, are the modestly unsigned articles in the daily press! CHAPTER SEVEN A Scout’s Story of the Defense of Beecher’s Island By great good fortune I am permitted to insert here a private letter to me from Mr. Sigmund Schlesinger, the Jewish boy referred to in Chapter Six, which, as it contains an original account of the defense of Beecher’s Island from the standpoint of one of the participants, is an unique document in our Western historical records:—C.T.B. * * * * * For several days we had been following an Indian trail so broad that it looked like a wagon-road. Those in our command experienced in Indian warfare told us that we must be on the track of an Indian village on the move, with a large herd of horses. Evidently they knew that we were behind them, and seemed to be in a hurry to get away, for we found camp utensils, tent-poles, etc., which had been dropped and no time taken to pick them up. Among other things we saw fresh antelope meat, quarters, etc., and although our rations were nearly, if not all, gone, except some coffee and very little “sow-belly,” we did not dare eat the Indians’ remnants.