Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/326

 killed and wounded. I mention this story here at the place where we heard it from Frank's lips, although we afterwards marched over the very spot where the massacre occurred.

We broke camp at a very early hour, the infantry being out on the road by four o'clock each morning, the cavalry remaining for some time later to let the animals have the benefit of the grass freshened by the frost of the night previous. We were getting quite close to Cloud Peak, the loftiest point in the Big Horn range; its massy dome towered high in the sky, white with a mantle of snow; here and there a streak of darkness betrayed the attempts of the tall pine trees on the summit to penetrate to the open air above them. Heavy belts of forest covered the sides of the range below the snow line, and extended along the skirts of the foot-hills well out into the plains below. The singing of meadow-larks, and the chirping of thousands of grasshoppers, enlivened the morning air; and save these no sound broke the stillness, except the rumbling of wagons slowly creeping along the road. The dismal snow-storm of which so much complaint had been made was rapidly superseded by most charming weather: a serene atmosphere, balmy breeze, and cloudless sky were the assurances that summer had come at last, and, as if anxious to repair past negligence, was about to favor us with all its charms. The country in which we now were was a great grassy plain covered with herbage just heading into seed. There was no timber except upon the spurs of the Big Horn, which loomed up on our left covered with heavy masses of pine, fir, oak, and juniper. From the innumerable seams and gashes in the flanks of this noble range issue the feeders of the Tongue and Powder, each insignificant in itself, but so well distributed that the country is as well adapted for pasturage as any in the world. The bluffs are full of coal of varying qualities, from lignite to a good commercial article; one of the men of the command brought in a curious specimen of this lignite, which at one end was coal and at the other was silicified. Buffalo tracks and Indian signs were becoming frequent.

Clear Creek, upon which we made camp, was a beautiful stream—fifty feet wide, two feet deep; current rapid and as much as eight miles an hour; water icy-cold from the melting of the snow-banks on the Big Horn; bottom of gravel; banks gently sloping; approaches good. Grass was excellent, but fuel rather