Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/436

 in the United States Army it was the hospital steward of Fort Laramie.

How fleeting is all human joy! A little cloud of dust arose above the hills to the northeast in the direction of the Raw-Hide; it grew bigger and bigger and never ceased until, in front of the commanding officer's quarters, it revealed the figures of "Spotted Tail," the head chief of the Sioux, and a dozen of his warriors. The great chief had come, he said, for the bones of his child; he was getting old, and his heart felt cold when it turned to the loved one who slept so far from the graves of her people. The way was long, but his ponies were fresh, and to help out the ride of the morrow he would start back with the rising of the moon that night. Consternation! Panic! Dismay! Use any term you please to describe the sensation when the steward confessed to the surgeon, and the surgeon to the commanding officer, the perilous predicament in which they were placed. The commanding officer was polite and diplomatic. He urged upon "Spotted Tail" that the requirements of hospitality could not permit of his withdrawal until the next day; neither was it proper that the bones of the daughter of so distinguished a chief should be carried off in a bundle uncoffined. He would have a coffin made, and when that should be ready the remains could be placed in it without a moment's delay or a particle of trouble. Once again, a ladder, a rope, and the silence of night—and the secret of the robbery was secure. When the story reached our camp on Goose Creek, Terry's Crow Indian messengers were relating to Crook the incidents of the Custer massacre.

I thought then with horror, and I still think, what might have been the consequences had "Spotted Tail" discovered the abstraction of those bones? Neither North nor South Dakota, Wyoming nor Montana might now be on the map, and their senators might not be known in Congress; and, perhaps, those who so ably represent the flourishing States of Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado might have some difficulty in finding all of their constituents. The Northern Pacific Railroad might not yet have been built, and thousands who to-day own happy homes on fertile plains would still be toiling aimlessly and hopelessly in the over-populated States of the Atlantic seaboard.

We found "Spotted Tail" a man of great dignity, but at all moments easy and affable in manner; not hard to please, sharp