Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/457

 *eight. When delivery was made, the mark of the inspecting and receiving officer would be stamped upon the outer sack, and the moment his back was turned, that sack would be pulled off, and the under and unmarked one submitted for additional counting.

Those two agencies were a stench in the nostrils of decent people; the attention of honest tax-payers was first called to their disgraceful management, by Mr. Welsh, of Philadelphia, and Professor Marsh, of New Haven. After a sufficiently dignified delay, suited to the gravity of the case, a congressional committee recommended the removal of the agents, and that the contractor be proceeded against, which was done, and the contractor sentenced to two years in the penitentiary.

Two other officers of the army did good work in the first and most trying days at these agencies, and their services should not be forgotten. They were Lieutenant Morris Foote, of the Ninth, and Lieutenant A. C. Johnson, of the Fourteenth Infantry. Lieutenant William P. Clarke, who had remained in charge of the Indian scouts, kept General Crook fully posted upon all that "Crazy Horse" had in contemplation; but nothing serious occurred until the fall of the year 1877, when the Nez Percé war was at its height, and it became necessary to put every available man of the Department of the Platte at Camp Brown to intercept Chief "Joseph" in his supposed purpose of coming down from the Gray Bull Pass into the Shoshone and Bannock country, in the hope of getting aid and comfort. "Crazy Horse" had lost so many of his best arms at the surrender, and he felt that he was so closely watched, and surrounded by so many lukewarm adherents, that it would be impossible to leave the agency openly; and accordingly he asked permission to go out into the Big Horn on a hunt for buffalo, which permission was declined. He then determined to break away in the night, and by making a forced march, put a good stretch of territory between himself and troops sent in pursuit.

Including the band of "Touch the Clouds," which had surrendered at Spotted Tail Agency some time before the arrival of "Crazy Horse" at Red Cloud, and the stragglers who had preceded him into the latter agency, "Crazy Horse" reckoned on having about two thousand people to follow his fortunes to British America, or whithersoever he might conclude to go.