Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/404

 *quently dismount on coming to steep, slippery descents where it would have been good policy to "favor" their faithful steeds.

Lieutenant Bubb was now ordered forward to the first settlement he could find in the Black Hills—Deadwood or any other this side—and there to buy all the supplies in sight; he took fifty picked mules and packers under Tom Moore; the escort of one hundred and fifty picked men from the Third Cavalry, mounted on our strongest animals, was under command of Colonel Mills, who had with him Lieutenants Chase, Crawford, Schwatka, Von Leuttewitz, and Doctor Stevens. Two of the correspondents, Messrs. Strahorn and Davenport, went along, leaving the main column before it had reached the camp of the night. We marched comparatively little the next day, not more than twenty-four miles, going into camp in a sheltered ravine on the South Fork of the Grand River, within sight of the Slim Buttes, and in a position which supplied all the fuel needed, the first seen for more than ninety miles, but so soaked with water that all we could do with it was to raise a smoke. It rained without intermission all day and all night, but we had found wood, and our spirits rose with the discovery; then, our scouts had killed five antelope, whose flesh was distributed among the command, the sick in hospital being served first. Plums and bull berries almost ripe were appearing in plenty, and gathered in quantity to be boiled and eaten with horse-meat. Men were getting pretty well exhausted, and each mile of the march saw squads of stragglers, something which we had not seen before; the rain was so unintermittent, the mud so sticky, the air so damp, that with the absence of food and warmth, men lost courage, and not a few of the officers did the same thing. Horses had to be abandoned in great numbers, but the best of them were killed to supply meat, which with the bull berries and water had become almost our only certain food, eked out by an occasional slice of antelope or jack rabbit.

The 8th of September was General Crook's birthday; fifteen or sixteen of the officers had come to congratulate him at his fire under the cover of a projecting rock, which kept off a considerable part of the down-pour of rain; it was rather a forlorn birthday party,—nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no chance to dry clothes, and nothing for which to be thankful except that we had found wood, which was a great blessing. Sage-brush, once so