Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/15



There is an old saw in the army which teaches that you can never know a man until after having made a scout with him in bad weather. All the good qualities and bad in the human makeup force their way to the surface under the stimulus of privation and danger, and it not infrequently happens that the comrade who at the military post was most popular, by reason of charm of manner and geniality, returns from this trial sadly lowered in the estimation of his fellows, and that he who in the garrison was most retiring, self-composed, and least anxious to make a display of glittering uniform, has swept all before him by the evidence he has given of fortitude, equanimity, courage, coolness, and good judgment under circumstances of danger and distress. But, whether the maxim be true or false, it is hardly too much for me to claim a hearing while I recall all that I know of a man with whom for more than fifteen years, it was my fortune to be intimately associated in all the changing vicissitudes which constituted service on the "border" of yesterday, which has vanished never to return.

It is not my purpose to write a biography of my late friend and commander—such a task I leave for others to whom it may be more congenial; speaking for myself, I am compelled to say that it is always difficult for me to peruse biography of any kind, especially military, and that which I do not care to read I do not care to ask others to read. In the present volume, there will be found collected descriptions of the regions in which the major