Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/403

 twisted, bounded boldly through a line of her tormentors, or cowered trembling under some sage-brush, the pursuers, armed with nose-bags, lariats, and halters, would advance from all sides, and keep up the chase until the wretched victim was fairly run to death. There would be enough shouting, yelling, and screeching to account for the slaughter of a thousand buffaloes. We learned to judge of the results of the chase in the inverse ratio to the noise: when an especially deafening outcry was heard, the verdict would be rendered at once that an unusually pigmy rabbit had been run to cover, and that the men who had the least to do with the capture had most to do with the tumult.

The country close to the head of Heart River was strewn with banded agate, much of it very beautiful. We made our first camp thirty-five miles south of Heart River by the side of two large pools of brackish water, so full of "alkali" that neither men nor horses cared to touch it. There wasn't a stick of timber in sight as big around as one's little finger; we tried to make coffee by digging a hole in the ground upon which we set a tin cup, and then each one in the mess by turns fed the flames with wisps of such dry grass as could be found and twisted into a petty fagot. We succeeded in making the coffee, but the water in boiling threw up so much saline and sedimentary matter that the appearance was decidedly repulsive. To the North Fork of the Grand River was another thirty-five miles, made, like the march of the preceding day, in the pelting rain which had lasted all night. The country was beautifully grassed, and we saw several patches of wild onions, which we dug up and saved to boil with the horse-meat which was now appearing as our food; General Crook found half a dozen rose-bushes, which he had guarded by a sentinel for the use of the sick; Lieutenant Bubb had four or five cracker-boxes broken up and distributed to the command for fuel; it is astonishing what results can be effected with a handful of fire-wood if people will only half try. The half and third ration of hard-tack was issued to each and every officer in the headquarters mess just the same as it was issued to enlisted men; the coffee was prepared with a quarter ration, and even that had failed. Although there could not be a lovelier pasturage than that through which we were marching, yet our animals, too, began to play out, because they were carrying exhausted and half-starved men who could not sit up in the saddle, and couldn't so fre