ape at its southwestern
edge. Black as it looked, that was their one refuge. There alone dare
they hope to find food. Thither had been sent an advanced detail with
orders to buy at owners' prices flour, bacon, bread, coffee, anything
the outlying settlements might have for sale that would sustain life.
Men who had been living on horse or prairie-dog would not be fastidious.
Here, too, the major had hoped by night to bivouac his weary men, but it
seemed desperately far away. The march had been much impeded, and now,
far out on his left flank was something that could not be passed
uninvestigated. He, with his worn battalion of four troops, had been
detached from the main column three days previous with orders to follow
the trail of a war-party of Sioux, and smite them hip and thigh if he
could catch them in forty-eight hours; if not, to veer around for the
valley and rejoin the column at its bivouac among the foot-hills. There
they should rest and recuperate. The pursued Indians, fortunately, had
turned southward and gone jogging leisurely away towards their
reservations, until warned of the pursuit by ambitious young braves
still hovering about the troops in hope of slicing off the scalp of some
straggler. Then, every man for himself, they had apparently scattered
over the face of the country, laughing gleefully to think what fun the
white chief would have in deciding which trail to follow. The situation
on the third day out had been summarized by Crounse, the guide, about as
follows: "So long as this outfit pulls together it won't catch an
Indian; so soon as it doesn't pull together it'll catch hell," which
being interpreted meant that the four companies united were too strong
for the number of Indians within striking distance, or say three days'
march, but that if it were divided into little detachments, and sent
hither and yon in pursuit of such small parties as would then allow
themselves to be seen, the chances were that those pursuing squads would
one by one be lured beyond support, surrounded, cut off, and then
massacred to a man. The major and his officers, most of them, knew this
as well as Crounse. They knew, moreover, that even so large a command as
theirs had been cut off, surrounded, and massacred more than once in the
history of Sioux warfare, but then the Indians were massed, not
scattered helter-skelter all over the continent as was the case the end
of this eventful summer. Well did Major Warren understand