Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/283

 require a volume of itself to describe all that could be learned regarding it from the days when the hardy French traders from Saint Louis, under Jules La Ramie, began trading with the Sioux and Cheyennes and Arapahoes, until the Government of the United States determined to establish one of its most important garrisons to protect the overland travel to the gold-fields of California. Many an old and decrepit officer, now on the retired list, will revert in fancy to the days when he was young and athletic, and Fort Laramie was the centre of all the business, and fashion, and gossip, and mentality of the North Platte country; the cynic may say that there wasn't much, and he may be right, but it represented the best that there was to be had.

Beyond Fort Laramie, separated by ninety-five miles of most unpromising country, lies the post of Fort Fetterman, on the right bank of the North Platte. Boulders of gneiss, greenstone, porphyry, and other rocks from the Laramie Peak lined the bottoms and sides of the different dry arroyos passed on the march. Not all the ravines were dry; in a few there was a good supply of water, and the whole distance out from Fort Laramie presented no serious objections on that score. In the "Twin Springs," "Horse-shoe" Creek, "Cave" Springs, "Elk Horn" Creek, "Lake Bonté," "Wagon Hound," "Bed-tick," and "Whiskey Gulch" a supply, greater or less in quantity, dependent upon season, could generally be found. Much of the soil was a gypsiferous red clay; in all the gulches and ravines were to be seen stunted pine and cedar. The scenery was extremely monotonous, destitute of herbage, except buffalo grass and sage brush. An occasional buffalo head, bleaching in the sun, gave a still more ghastly tone to the landscape. Every few minutes a prairie dog projected his head above the entrance of his domicile and barked at our cortege passing by. Among the officers and soldiers of the garrison at Fort Fetterman, as well as among those who were reporting for duty with the expedition, the topics of conversation were invariably the probable strength and position of the enemy, the ability of horses and men to bear the extreme cold to which they were sure to be subjected, and other matters of a kindred nature which were certain to suggest themselves.

There, for example, was the story, accepted without question, that the Sioux had originally shown a very friendly spirit toward the Americans passing across their country to California, until