Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/296

 several inches long and bodies swathed in raiment of furs and hides made this expedition of cavalry resemble a long column of Santa Clauses on their way to the polar regions to lay in a new supply of Christmas gifts. We saw some very fresh buffalo manure and also some new Indian sign. Scouts were pushed ahead to scour the country while the command went into bivouac in a secluded ravine which afforded a sufficiency of water, cottonwood fuel, and good grass, and sheltered us from the observation of roving Indians, although the prevailing inclement weather rendered it highly improbable that many hunters or spies would be far away from their villages. The temperature became lower and lower, and the regular indications upon our thermometer after sundown were -6° and -10° of the Fahrenheit scale. Men and animals had not yet suffered owing to the good fortune in always finding ravines in which to bivouac, and where the vertical clay banks screened from the howling winds. The snow continued all through the night of the 9th and the day of the 10th of March, but we succeeded in making pretty good marches, following down the course of Prairie Dog Creek for twenty-two miles in the teeth of a blast which was laden with minute crystals of snow frozen to the sharpness of razors and cutting the skin wherever it touched. Prairie Dog Creek at first flows through a narrow gorge, but this widens into a flat valley filled with the burrows of the dainty little animals which give the stream its name and which could be seen in numbers during every lull in the storm running around in the snow to and from their holes and making tracks in every direction. Before seeing this I had been under the impression that the prairie dog hibernated.

While the severity of the weather had had but slight effect upon the command directly, the slippery trail, frozen like glass, imposed an unusual amount of hard labor upon both human and equine members, and it was only by the greatest exertion that serious accidents were averted in the crossing of the little ravines which intersected the trail every two or three hundred yards. One of the corporals of "D" Company, Third Cavalry, was internally injured, to what extent could not be told at the moment, by his horse falling upon him while walking by his side. A "travois" was made of two long saplings and a blanket, in which the sufferer was dragged along behind a mule. The detachment of