on the Mini Pusa, just arrived, and that slender column of
smoke rising from among the cottonwoods tells of a tiny fire where the
men are boiling their coffee, while, miles away to the southwest, the
rising dust-clouds proclaim the coming of the regiment itself. Out on
the distant heights, on either side, other smokes are rising. Indian
signals, that say to lurking warriors far and near, "Be on your guard;
soldiers coming;" and so, here on the breaks of the Mini Pusa on this
scorching Sabbath morn, the vanguard of the --th has reached and tapped
the broad highway of Indian commerce. The laws of the nation they are
sworn to defend prohibit their interfering with the distribution of
ammunition by that same nation to the foes they are ordered to meet. The
nation is impartial: it provides friend and foe alike. The War Office
sends its cartridges to the --th through the ordnance officer,
Lieutenant X. The Indian Bureau looks after its wards through Mr. ----at
Red Cloud. And now the --th is ordered to stop those cartridges from
getting to Sitting Bull up on the Rosebud. That is what brings them here
to the Mini Pusa, and we see them now riding down in long dusty column
into the valley, heedless of the dust they make, for the Indians have
hovered on their flanks, out of sight, out of range, but _seeing_, ever
since they crossed the Platte; and here they are, "old Stannard" and
Billings with the advance, lying prone on their stomachs and searching
through their field-glasses for any signs of Indian coming from the
reservations, while with the column itself, in their battered slouch
hats and rough flannel and buckskin, bristling with cartridges and ugly
beards, burned and blistered and parched with scorching sun and winds
tempered only with alkali dust, ride our Arizona friends,--many of them
at least. Old Bucketts with his green goggles; Turner with his
melancholy face and placid ways; Raymond, stern and swart; Canker,
querulous and "nagging" with his men, but eager for any service;
Stafford, who won his troop _vice_ the noble-hearted Tanner whom we lost
among the Apaches; Wayne, who is loquacity itself whenever he can find a
listener, and who talks his patient subaltern almost deaf through the
long day marches; and Crane and Wilkins, who are a good deal together at
every halt, and consort more with Canker than other captains; and then
there is the jolly element that ever clusters around Blake, whose
spirits defy adversity, and w