Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/410

 The barking of stray puppies, the whining of children, the confused hum of the conversation going on among two thousand soldiers, officers, and packers confined within the narrow limits of the ravine, were augmented by the sharp crack of rifles and the whizzing of bullets, because "Crazy Horse," prompt in answering the summons of his distressed kinsmen, was now on the ground, and had drawn his lines around our position, which he hoped to take by assault, not dreaming that the original assailants had been re-enforced so heavily. It was a very pretty fight, what there was of it, because one could take his seat almost anywhere and see all that was going on from one end of the field to the other. "Crazy Horse" moved his men up in fine style, but seemed to think better of the scheme after the cavalry gave him a volley from their carbines; the Sioux were not left in doubt long as to what they were to do, because the infantry battalions commanded by Burt and Daniel W. Burke got after them and raced them off the field, out of range.

One of our officers whose conduct impressed me very much was Lieutenant A. B. Bache, Fifth Cavalry: he was so swollen with inflammatory rheumatism that he had been hauled for days in a "travois" behind a mule; but, hearing the roll of rifles and carbines, he insisted upon being mounted upon a horse and strapped to the saddle, that he might go out upon the skirmish line. We never had a better soldier than he, but he did not survive the hardships of that campaign. The Sioux did not care to leave the battle-field without some token of prowess, and seeing a group of ten or twelve cavalry horses which had been abandoned during the day, and were allowed to follow along at their own pace, merely to be slaughtered by Bubb for meat when it should be needed, flattered themselves that they had a grand prize within reach; a party of bold young bucks, anxious to gain a trifle of renown, stripped themselves and their ponies, and made a dash for the broken-down cast-offs; the skirmishers, by some sort of tacit consent, refrained from firing a shot, and allowed the hostiles to get right into the "bunch" and see how hopelessly they had been fooled, and then when the Sioux started to spur and gallop back to their own lines the humming of bullets apprised them that our men were having the joke all to themselves.

Just as "Crazy Horse" hauled off his forces, two soldiers bare