Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/293

 When we reached the "Crazy Woman's Fork" of the Powder River, camp was established, with an abundance of excellent water and any amount of dry cottonwood fuel; but grass was not very plentiful, although there had been a steady improvement in that respect ever since leaving the South Cheyenne. We had that day passed through the ruins of old Fort Reno, one of the military cantonments abandoned by the Government at the demand of the Sioux in 1867. Nothing remained except a few chimneys, a part of the bake-house, and some fragments of the adobe walls of the quarters or offices. The grave-yard had a half dozen or a dozen of broken, dilapidated head-boards to mark the last resting-places of brave soldiers who had fallen in desperate wars with savage tribes that civilization might extend her boundaries. Our wagon-train was sent back under escort of the infantry to Fort Reno, there to await our return.

All the officers were summoned to hear from General Crook's own lips what he wanted them to do. He said that we should now leave our wagons behind and strike out with the pack-trains; all superfluous baggage must be left in camp; every officer and every soldier should be allowed the clothes on his back and no more; for bedding each soldier could carry along one buffalo robe or two blankets; to economize transportation, company officers should mess with their men, and staff officers or those "unattached" with the pack-trains; officers to have the same amount of bedding as the men; each man could take one piece of shelter tent, and each officer one piece of canvas, or every two officers one tent fly. We were to start out on a trip to last fifteen days unless the enemy should be sooner found, and were to take along half rations of bacon, hard tack, coffee, and sugar.

About seven o'clock on the night of March 7, 1876, the light of a three-quarters moon, we began our march to the north and west, and made thirty-five miles. At first the country had the undulating contour of that near old Fort Reno, but the prairie "swells" were soon superseded by bluffs of bolder and bolder outline until, as we approached the summit of the "divide" where "Clear Fork" heads, we found ourselves in a region deserving the title mountainous. In the bright light of the moon and stars, our column of cavalry wound up the steep hill-sides like an enormous snake, whose scales were glittering revolvers and carbines. The view was certainly very exhilarating,