Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/388

 *cided; his kindly blue eyes indicated good-nature; his complexion, bronzed by wind and rain and sun to the color of an old sheepskin-covered Bible, gave him a decidedly martial appearance. He won his way to all hearts by unaffectedness and affability. In his manner he was the antithesis of Crook. Crook was also simple and unaffected, but he was reticent and taciturn to the extreme of sadness, brusque to the verge of severity. In Terry's face I thought I could sometimes detect traces of indecision; but in Crook's countenance there was not the slightest intimation of anything but stubbornness, rugged resolution, and bull-dog tenacity. Of the two men Terry alone had any pretensions to scholarship, and his attainments were so great that the whole army felt proud of him; but Nature had been bountiful to Crook, and as he stood there under a tree talking with Terry, I thought that within that cleanly outlined skull, beneath that brow, and behind those clear-glancing blue-gray eyes, there was concealed more military sagacity, more quickness of comprehension and celerity to meet unexpected emergencies, than in any of our then living Generals excepting Grant, of whose good qualities he constantly reminded me, or Sheridan, whose early friend and companion he had been at West Point and in Oregon.

That evening, General Crook and his staff dined with General Terry, meeting with the latter Captains Smith and Gibbs, Lieutenants Maguire, Walker, Thompson, Nowlan, and Michaelis. From this point Terry sent his wagon-train down to the Yellowstone, and ordered the Fifth Infantry to embark on one of the steamboats and patrol the river, looking out for trails of hostiles crossing or attempting to cross to the north. All the sick and disabled were sent down with this column; we lost Cain and Bache and a number of enlisted men, broken down by the exposure of the campaign. The heat in the middle of the day had become excessive, and General Terry informed me that on the 8th it registered in his own tent 117° Fahrenheit, and on the 7th, 110°. Much of this increase of temperature was, no doubt, due to the heat from the pasturage destroyed by the hostiles, which comprehended an area extending from the Yellowstone to the Big Horn Mountains, from the Big Horn River on the west to the Little Missouri on the east.

In two things the column from the Yellowstone was sadly deficient: in cavalry and in rapid transportation. The Seventh