Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/445

 over a region as destitute as the Sahara. The rations taken out for the women and children were well bestowed; there was no food in the village, and some of the more imprudent ate themselves sick, and I may add that one of "Crazy Horse's" men sent on in advance to Camp Robinson surfeited himself and died.

While Red Cloud was absent there were several small brushes with petty bands of prowling hostiles. Lieutenants Lemly, Cumings, and Hardie, of the Third Cavalry, did spirited work near Deadwood and Fort Fetterman respectively, and a battalion of the same regiment, under Major Vroom, was kept patrolling the eastern side of the Hills.

Time did not hang heavy upon our hands at Robinson: there were rides and walks about the post for those who took pleasure in them; sometimes a party would go as far as Crow Butte, with its weird, romantic story of former struggles between the Absaroka and the Dakota; sometimes into the pine-mantled bluffs overlooking the garrison, where, two years later, the brave Cheyennes, feeling that the Government had broken faith with them, were again on the war-path, fighting to the death. There were visits to the Indian villages, where the courteous welcome received from the owners of the lodges barely made amends for the vicious attacks by half-rabid curs upon the horses' heels. The prismatic splendors of the rainbow had been borrowed to give beauty to the raiment or lend dignity to the countenances of Indians of both sexes, who moved in a steady stream to the trader's store to buy all there was to sell. Many of the squaws wore bodices and skirts of the finest antelope skin, thickly incrusted with vari-colored beads or glistening with the nacreous brilliancy of the tusks of elk; in all these glories of personal adornment they were well matched by the warriors, upon whose heads were strikingly picturesque war-bonnets with eagle feathers studding them from crown to ground. These were to be worn only on gala occasions, but each day was a festal one at that time for all these people. Almost as soon as the sun proclaimed the hour of noon groups of dancers made their way to the open ground in front of the commanding general's quarters, and there favored the whites with a never-ending series of "Omaha" dances and "Spoon" dances, "Squaw" dances and "War" dances, which were wonderfully interesting and often beautiful to look upon, but open to the objection that the unwary Caucasian who ven