department, vast store of shekels, and a strong guard, and as a
consequence there would be some two thousand men around the cantonment
with pockets full of money and no one to help them spend it, and nothing
suitable to spend it on. It was a duty all citizens owed to the
Territory to hasten to the scene and gather in for local circulation all
that was obtainable of that disbursement; otherwise the curse of the
army might get ahead of them and the boys would gamble it away among
themselves or spend it for vile whiskey manufactured for their sole
benefit. Gallatin Valley was emptied of its prominent practitioners in
the game of poker. The stream was black with "Mackinaw" boats and other
craft. There was a rush for the cantonment that rivalled the multitudes
of the mining days, but all too late. The command was already packing up
when the first contingent arrived, and the commanding officer,
recognizing the fraternity at a glance, warned them outside the limits
of camp that night, declined their services as volunteers on the
impending campaign, and treated them with such calmly courteous
recognition of their true character that the Eastern press was speedily
filled with sneering comment on the hopelessness of ever subduing the
savage tribes of the Northwest when the government intrusts the duty to
upstart officers of the regular service whose sole conception of their
functions is to treat with insult and contempt the hardy frontiersman
whose mere presence with the command would be of incalculable benefit.
"We have it from indisputable authority," says _The Miner's Light_ of
Brandy Gap, "that when our esteemed fellow-citizen Hank Mulligan and
twenty gallant shots and riders like himself went in a body to
General---- at the cantonment and offered their services as volunteers
against the Sioux now devastating the homesteads and settlements of the
Upper Missouri and Yellowstone valleys, they were treated with haughty
and contemptuous refusal by that bandbox caricature of a soldier and
threatened with arrest if they did not quit the camp. When _will_ the
United States learn that its frontiers can never be purged of the Indian
scourges of our civilization until the conduct of affairs in the field
is intrusted to other hands than these martinets of the drill-ground? It
is needless to remark in this connection that the expedition led by
General---- has proved a complete failure, and that the Indians easily
escaped his clumsily-led