Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/424

 behavior in return, instead of which many of our citizens had been killed and the trails of the murderers ran straight for the Red Cloud Agency; it was necessary for the chiefs to show their friendship by something more than empty words, and they would be held accountable for the good behavior of their young men. He did not wish to do harm to any one, but he had been sent out there to maintain order and he intended to do it, and if the Sioux did not see that it was to their interest to help they would soon regret their blindness. If all the Sioux would come in and start life as stock-raisers, the trouble would end at once, but so long as any remained out, the white men would insist upon war being made, and he should expect all the chiefs there present to aid in its prosecution.

There were now fifty-three companies of soldiers at Red Cloud, and they could figure for themselves just how long they could withstand such force. "Red Cloud" had been insolent to all officers placed over him, and his sympathies with the hostiles had been open and undisguised; therefore he had been deposed, and "Spotted Tail," who had been friendly, was to be the head chief of all the Sioux.

The assignment of the troops belonging to the summer expedition to winter quarters, and the organization from new troops of the expedition, which was to start back and resume operations in the Big Horn and Yellowstone country, occupied several weeks to the exclusion of all other business, and it was late in October before the various commands began concentrating at Fort Fetterman for the winter's work.

The wagon-train left at Powder River, or rather at Goose Creek, under Major Furey, had been ordered in by General Sheridan, and had reached Fort Laramie and been overhauled and refitted. It then returned to Fetterman to take part in the coming expedition. General Crook took a small party to the summit of the Laramie Peak, and killed and brought back sixty-four deer, four elk, four mountain sheep, and one cinnamon bear; during the same week he had a fishing party at work on the North Platte River, and caught sixty fine pike weighing one hundred and one pounds.

Of the resulting winter campaign I do not intend to say much, having in another volume described it completely and minutely; to that volume ("Mackenzie's Last Fight with the Chey