Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/299

 that before a strong fire for several minutes to thaw it so it could be eaten, and all the forks, spoons, and knives had to be run through hot water or hot ashes to prevent them from taking the skin off the tongue. The same rule had to be observed with the bits when our horses were bridled. I have seen loaves of bread divided into two zones—the one nearer the blazing fire soft and eatable, the other still frozen hard as flint and cold as charity. The same thing was to be noticed in the pans of beans and other food served up for consumption.

For several days we had similar experiences which need not be repeated. Our line of march still continued northward, going down the Tongue River, whose valley for a long distance narrowed to a little gorge bordered by bluffs of red and yellow sandstone, between one hundred and fifty and two hundred feet high—in some places much higher—well fringed with scrub pine and juniper. Coal measures of a quality not definitely determined cropped out in all parts of the country. By this time we were pretty far advanced across the borders of the Territory of Montana, and in a region well grassed with grama and the "black sage," a plant almost as nutritious as oats. The land in the stream bottoms seemed to be adapted for cultivation. Again the scouts crossed over to the Rosebud, finding no signs of the hostiles, but bringing back the meat of two buffalo bulls which they had killed. This was a welcome addition to the food of men without fresh meat of any kind; our efforts to coax some of the fish in the stream to bite did not meet with success; the weather was too cold for them to come out of the deep pools in which they were passing the winter. The ice was not far from two feet in thickness, and the trout were torpid. The scouts could not explain why they had not been able to place the villages of the hostiles, and some of our people were beginning to believe that there were none out from the reservations, and that all had gone in upon hearing that the troops had moved out after them; in this view neither Frank Gruard, "Big Bat," nor the others of the older heads concurred.

"We'll find them pretty soon" was all that Frank would say. As we approached the Yellowstone we came upon abandoned villages, with the frame-work of branches upon which the squaws had been drying meat; one or two, or it may have been three, of these villages had been palisaded as a protection against the incursions of the Absaroka or Crows of Montana, who raided upon