Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/344

 great many scrub pines in the recesses of the bluffs. The cause for the sudden disappearance of the grass was soon apparent: the scouts ran in upon a herd of buffaloes whose cast-off bulls had been the principal factor in our meat supply for more than a week; the trails ran in every direction, and the grass had been nipped off more closely than if cut by a scythe. There was much more cactus than we had seen for some time, and a reappearance of the sage-brush common nearer to Fort Fetterman.

In the afternoon, messengers from our extreme advance came as fast as ponies would carry them, with the information that we were upon the trail of a very great village of the enemy. The cavalry dismounted and unsaddled, seeking the shelter of all the ravines to await the results of the examination to be made by a picked detail from the Crows and Shoshones. The remaining Indians joined in a wild, strange war-dance, the younger warriors becoming almost frenzied before the exercises terminated. The young men who had been sent out to spy the land rejoined us on a full run; from the tops of the hills they yelled like wolves, the conventional signal among the plains tribes that the enemy has been sighted. Excitement, among the Indians at least, was at fever heat; many of the younger members of the party re-echoed the ululation of the incoming scouts; many others spurred out to meet them and escort them in with becoming honors. The old chiefs held their bridles while they dismounted, and the less prominent warriors deferentially formed in a circle to listen to their narrative. It did not convey much information to my mind, unaccustomed to the indications so familiar to them. It simply amounted to this, that the buffaloes were in very large herds directly ahead of us, and were running away from a Sioux hunting party.

Knowing the unfaltering accuracy of an Indian's judgment in matters of this kind, General Crook told the chiefs to arrange their plan of march according to their own ideas. On occasions like this, as I was told by our scouts and others, the young men of the Assiniboines and Northern Sioux were required to hold in each hand a piece of buffalo chip as a sign that they were telling the truth; nothing of that kind occurred on the occasion in question. While the above was going on, the Indians were charging about on their hardy little ponies, to put them out of breath, so that, when they regained their wind, they would not