Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/331

 we were not going to have our marching for nothing; it kept vedettes and guards on the alert and camp in condition for fight at a moment's notice. Grass becoming scarce on Tongue River Crook moved his command to the confluence of the two forks of Goose Creek, which is the largest affluent of the Tongue; the distance was a trifle over seventeen miles, and during the march a hail-storm of great severity visited us and continued its pestiferous attentions for some time after tents had been erected. The situation at the new camp had many advantages: excellent pasturage was secured from the slopes of the hills; water flowed in the greatest profusion—clear, sweet, and icy cold, murmuring gently in the channels on each side; fire-wood in sufficiency could be gathered along the banks; the view of the mountains was beautiful and exhilarating, and the climate serene and bracing. Goose Creek was twenty-five yards wide, with a uniform depth of three feet, but greatly swollen by recent rains and the melting of the snow-banks up in the mountains.

We had to settle down and await the return of Frank Gruard, Louis Richaud, and "Big Bat," concerning whose safety not a few of the command began to express misgivings, notwithstanding they were all experienced frontiersmen, able to look out for their own safety under almost any contingencies. The more sanguine held to the view that the Crows had retired farther into their own country on account of the assembling of great bands of their enemies—the Sioux and Cheyennes—and that our emissaries had to travel much farther than they had first contemplated. But they had been separated from us for ten or twelve days, and it was becoming a matter of grave concern what to do about them.

In a bivouac of that kind the great object of life is to kill time. Drilling and guard duty occupy very few minutes, reading and writing become irksome, and conversation narrowly escapes the imputation of rank stupidity. We had enjoyed several pony races, but the best plugs for that sort of work—Major Burt's white and Lieutenant Robertson's bay—had both been shot during the skirmish of the 9th of the month, the former fatally, and we no longer enjoyed the pleasure of seeing races in which the stakes were nothing but a can of corn or a haunch of venison on each side, but which attracted as large and as deeply interested crowds as many more pretentious affairs within the