On the Plains with Custer: The Western Life and Deeds of the Chief With the Yellow Hair, Under Whom Served Boy Bugler Ned Fletcher, When in the Troublous Years 1866–1876 the Fighting Seventh Cavalry Helped to Win Pioneer Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota for White Civilization and Today's PeaceSabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
General
On the Plains with Custer: The Western Life and Deeds of the Chief With the Yellow Hair, Under Whom Served Boy Bugler Ned Fletcher, When in the Troublous Years 1866–1876 the Fighting Seventh Cavalry Helped to Win Pioneer Kansas, Nebraska, and Dakota for White Civilization and Today's Peace
Sabin, Edwin L. (Edwin Legrand)
Custer, George A. (George Armstrong), 1839-1876 -- Fiction; Western stories
Early in the morning of April spread an alarm, from sentry to
officers. Through a hole made in the wooden wall by white prisoners
Rain-in-the-Face had stolen away. He did not appear at the agency.
He was not found in the nearby camps. However, soon, by mouth to
mouth, Sioux to Sioux, from Sitting Bull’s band of hostiles far up the
Yellowstone River in Montana he sent word. Charley Reynolds himself was
authority.
“Rain-in-the-Face says,” reported Charley, “to tell the Long Hair and
the Long Hair’s brother that he will cut their hearts out because they
put a great warrior in prison.”
XXI
SITTING BULL SAYS: “COME ON!”
This summer of 1875 no regular campaign or expedition was made by the
Seventh Cavalry. The few months were spent in drills at Fort Lincoln
and Fort Rice, and in short scouts to reconnoitre and for practice.
However, there was no telling when the whole regiment might be ordered
out in a hurry. The Sioux muttered constantly; and according to Charley
Reynolds and other persons who knew, around the posts, they were “going
bad.”
Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were still outside the reservation, in
their own country of the Powder River and the Big Horn region; but even
Red Cloud and Spotted Tail, who had first signed the treaty of 1868,
agreeing to the reservation of Dakota, complained stoutly of unfair
treatment.
Red Cloud had claimed that the Sioux were being robbed in their
supplies; some of the supplies sent out by the Government never reached
them, and other supplies were unfit to use. An investigation proved
that Red Cloud had spoken truth.
The Northern Pacific Railroad had stopped at Bismarck, but the surveys
on across Dakota had been made, and this also annoyed the Sioux. They
had understood that no white man’s road should cross the reservation
without their permission. And, of course, there was the Black Hills
trouble.
“Well, what do you think, these days, Charley?” invited Odell, as the
summer wore on, and only rumors filled the air. “It’s getting late for
war, until next year; ain’t it? But I hear there’s a thousand miners in
the Black Hills, and they’ve started a town they call Custer City.”
“Lonesome” Charley Reynolds slowly puffed at his pipe, and gazed before
with his calm, sombre dark-blue eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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