Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/391

 Shoshone boys would drive their lances into the coil from three or four different directions, exclaiming at the same time: "Gott tammee you! Gott tammee you!" which was all the English they had been able to master.

We struck the Powder and followed it down to its junction with the Yellowstone, where we were to replenish our supplies from Terry's steamboats. The Powder contrasted unfavorably with the Tongue: the latter was about one hundred and fifty feet wide, four feet deep, swift current, and cold water, and, except in the Bad Lands near its mouth, clear and sweet, and not perceptibly alkaline. The Powder was the opposite in every feature: its water, turbid and milky; current, slow; bottom, muddy and frequently miry, whereas that of the Tongue was nearly always hard-pan. The water of the Powder was alkaline and not always palatable, and the fords rarely good and often dangerous. The Yellowstone was a delightful stream: its width was not over two hundred and fifty yards, but its depth was considerable, its bed constant, and channel undeviating. The current flows with so little noise that an unsuspecting person would have no idea of its velocity; but steamboats could rarely stem it, and bathers venturing far from the banks were swept off their feet. The depth was never less than five feet in the main channel during time of high water. The banks were thickly grassed and covered with cottonwood and other timber in heavy copses.

Crook's forces encamped on the western bank of the Powder; the supplies we had looked for were not on hand in sufficient quantity, and Lieutenant Bubb, our commissary, reported that he was afraid that we were going to be grievously disappointed in that regard. General Terry sent steamers up and down the Yellowstone to gather up all stores from depots, and also from points where they had been unloaded on account of shallow water. Crook's men spent a great deal of the time bathing in the Yellowstone and washing their clothes, following the example set by the General himself: each man waded out into the channel clad in his undergarments and allowed the current to soak them thoroughly, and he would then stand in the sunlight until dried. Each had but the suit on his back, and this was all the cleaning or change they had for sixty days. The Utes and Shoshones became very discontented, and "Washakie" had several interviews with Crook, in which he plainly told