Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/415

 There may still be people who give credence to the old superstitions about the relative endurance of horses of different colors, and believe that white is the weakest color. For their information I wish to say that the company of cavalry which had the smallest loss of horses during this exhausting march was the white horse troop of the Fifth, commanded by Captain Robert H. Montgomery; I cannot place my fingers upon the note referring to it, but I will state from recollection that not one of them was left behind.

On the 13th we remained in camp until noon to let men have a rest and give stragglers a chance to catch up with the command. Our cook made a most tempting ragout out of some pony-meat, a fragment of antelope liver, a couple of handfuls of wild onions, and the shin-bone of an ox killed by the Sioux or Cheyennes, and which was to us almost as interesting as the fragments of weeds to the sailors of Columbus. This had been simmering all night, and when morning came there was enough of it to supply many of our comrades with a hot platterful. At noon we crossed to the Belle Fourche, six miles to the south, the dangerous approaches of Willow Creek being corduroyed and placed in good order by a party under Lieutenant Charles King, who had been assigned by General Merritt to the work.

The Belle Fourche appealed to our fancies as in every sense deserving of its flattering title: it was not less than one hundred feet wide, three deep, with a good flow of water, and a current of something like four miles an hour. The bottom was clay and sandstone drift, and even if the water was a trifle muddy, it tasted delicious after our late tribulations. Wells dug in the banks afforded even better quality for drinking or cooking. The dark clouds still hung threateningly overhead, but what of that? all eyes were strained in the direction of Deadwood, for word had come from Mills and Bubb that they had been successful, and that we were soon to catch a glimpse of the wagons laden with food for our starving command. A murmur rippled through camp; in a second it had swelled into a roar, and broken into a wild cry, half yell, half cheer. Down the hill-sides as fast as brawny men could drive them ran fifty head of beef cattle, and not more than a mile in the rear wagon sheets marked out the slower-moving train with the supplies of the commissariat.

As if to manifest sympathy with our feelings, the sun unveiled